Thousands of residents have fled the picturesque island of Santorini as relentless earthquakes continue to shake the renowned Greek tourist hotspot. Reports said hundreds were seen at the island’s port Tuesday morning, clutching their belongings as they awaited ferries bound for Athens.
According to Greece’s public broadcaster ERT, more than 6,000 people have left in recent days.
The latest tremour, measuring 4.8 in magnitude, struck early Tuesday, following a 4.9-magnitude quake over the weekend — the strongest recorded so far, CNN reported. In the past three days alone, approximately 550 tremours measuring at least 3.0 have been detected in the Aegean Sea, between Santorini and the nearby islands of Amorgos and Ios, the report said.
Greece’s Earthquake Planning and Protection Organization (OASP) has warned that this heightened seismic activity could persist for days or even weeks.
Santorini welcomes around 3.4 million tourists annually but has a permanent population of just 20,000. With the tremours intensifying, many have opted to leave the “Instagram Island” for the mainland.
“I work on the island, I have been a resident for years. But today… nobody was expecting this to happen, what is happening now on the island is incredible,” Julian Sinanaj, 35, was quoted as saying in a Reuters report.
Santorini Quakes: Schools Closed, Additional Flights Scheduled
On Monday, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis urged residents to stay calm as authorities work to manage what he called “a very intense geological phenomenon”.
To aid evacuations, additional flights have been scheduled, with 15 departures from Santorini to Athens set for Tuesday, the CNN report said, adding that schools will remain closed until Friday, and officials have advised residents to avoid large indoor gatherings.
“Everything is closed. No one works now. The whole island has emptied,” Reuters quoted Dori, an 18-year-old resident, as saying.
People have been advised to stay away from coastal areas due to landslides risk, and also avoid indoor gatherings, with seismologists saying the intense seismic activity was likely to continue for days or weeks.
On Monday, emergency rescue teams were dispatched to Santorini, news agency Associated Press reported, adding that authorities also implemented precautionary measures on several nearby islands in the Aegean Sea — which are renowned summer tourist hotspots — after more than 200 undersea quakes were detected in the region over the past three days.
Situated along the boundary of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates, Santorini is accustomed to seismic activity, though prolonged tremor sequences like this are rare. Santorini’s last major earthquake, a 7.5-magnitude event in 1956, left at least 53 dead and over 100 injured.
The island’s famous caldera — a vast crater formed by a volcanic eruption — dates back approximately 3,600 years, one of the most powerful blasts in recorded history.
