A swarm of earthquakes continued to rattle Greece’s most popular tourist island on Wednesday.
The volcanic island of Santorini has hit every few minutes through the night and into Wednesday as authorities bolstered their emergency plans in case the temblors are a harbinger of a larger quake to come.
About 6,000 people have left on ferries and planes in recent days as hundreds of small quakes were registered in the surounding sea, shaking buildings, kicking up dust on the island’s rocky cliffs, and raising fears of a major earthquake.
However, ferry services were disrupted on Wednesday due to rough weather.
Rescue crews with a sniffer dog and drones have been deployed on Santorini as a precaution since Sunday, while authorities have banned access to several coastal areas and ordered schools to shut for the week.
Local authorities on several other islands in the Cyclades also shut down schools, while public events on Santorini have been banned.
Thousands of residents and visitors have already left Santorini, frightened by the hundreds of earthquakes measuring between magnitude 3 and magnitude 5 that have struck the area since the weekend, with ferry lines and commercial airlines adding flights and ships to their schedules this week to accommodate the increased demand.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was to attend an emergency meeting at the Civil Protection Ministry in the capital, Athens, to discuss the situation later in the day.
The quakes, which all have epicenters beneath the seabed between Santorini and the nearby island of Amorgos, have so far caused no injuries or major damage, although limited rockslides and cracks in some older buildings have been reported on Santorini.
Greece lies in a highly seismically active part of the world and earthquakes are frequent. But it is extremely rare for any part of the country to experience such an intense barrage of frequent earthquakes.
A map of Santorini:
Predicting earthquakes is not scientifically possible, and experts cannot yet determine definitively whether what has been occurring between Santorini and Amorgos could be a precursor to a significantly larger earthquake, or is part of an earthquake swarm that could continue shaking the area with small or moderate intensity quakes for weeks or months.
Last week, authorities said monitors had picked up increased volcanic activity within Santorini’s caldera, or flooded crater, but scientists say this is unrelated to the current quakes. They have also said the seismic activity is unlikely to trigger either of the two volcanoes in the area.
Southeast Aegean regional governor Giorgos Hatzimarkos told Greek state television that the country’s electricity provider had sent staff and equipment to the island to prepare contingency plans in case of power cuts.
Digital Governance Deputy Minister Konstantinos Kyranakis said the government was working with telecommunications providers to ensure backup plans in case of a network outage in the area.
The island’s population swells in summer when millions of tourists visit the traditional white-painted villas that line its steep hillsides. The 2021 census puts Santorini’s permanent population at 15,000, so it is likely that several thousand remain on the island, given that it is off-season.
