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Santorini has been beaten by a powerful and shallow earthquake of magnitude 5.3, which is the strongest to hit the Greek island during recent seismic activity in the area.
The tremors felt in Athens on Monday night and measured a focal depth of 17 km (10.6 miles).
The residents of the neighboring Amorgos Island remain on a maximum alert after the last tremor, which followed a moderate earthquake of 5.0 among the islands on Sunday night.
The tourist access point has been shaken by seismic activity since January and the seismological laboratory of the University of Athens has detected more than 12,800 earthquakes.
Some residents have been seen patrolling dangerous areas to deter tourists from taking photos in cliffs.
There have been landslides in many parts of Santorini due to the frequency and intensity of tremors and experts have not ruled out an important earthquake.
The seismologists were optimistic about the intensity of the earthquakes that began to decrease, but now they are worried that they are getting worse.
An emergency state will remain in its place in Santorini until at least March 3.
Sunday’s earthquake was preceded by three smaller than more than 4.0 magnitude, while all three on Monday morning were also more than 4.0.
The inspections did not find damage to the buildings in Santorini or Amorgos.
Injuries have not been reported as a result of the earthquakes, which have been numbered in the thousands since January 26, but more than 11,000 people have abandoned the islands.
The schools will remain closed in Santorini, amoros and several other islands on Monday and Tuesday.
A team of the Special Disaster Response Unit has undertaken to Amorgos de Patras with a special earthquake rescue vehicle, and the technical teams are expected to inspect the electricity grid on the island.
Kostas Papazachos, a professor of Seismology at the University of Thessaloniki of Aristotle, told the Greek station Ert that the authorities had to allow the situation to continue most or the majority of February.
“Hopefully we slowly move towards a gradual decallation,” he said.
“We will have to be a bit patient and see. Hopefully after a couple of weeks the phenomenon will begin to decrease.”
He said that the possibility of an important earthquake had not been completely discarded.
Meanwhile, the Viking Star cruise, with 893 passengers and 470 crew, docked at the port of Souda in Crete early on Monday morning.
It should be the first cruise of the season in Santorini. The ship changed its route mainly to avoid the overcrowding of the cable car in Santorini during the seismic activity.
The strongest earthquake so far was a magnitude of 5.2 on Thursday. Six or more is considered severe.
Greece is one of the most prone countries to the earthquakes in Europe, but scientists are perplexed by the current earthquake “groups” that have not been related to an important shock.
Santorini is known as the Hellenic volcanic arch, which is a chain of islands created by volcanoes, but the last important eruption was in the 1950s.
The Greek authorities have said that recent tremors were related to the movements of the tectonic plate, not the volcanic activity.
Scientists cannot predict the exact moment, the size or location of earthquakes.
From January 26 to February 8, 2025, the Sismology Laboratory (SL) of the University of Athens registered more than 12,800 earthquakes in the Santorini-Amorgos zone.
Additional Ruth Comerford reports.
