[EN IMAGES] Greece: 6,000 people left Santorini Island

[EN IMAGES] Greece: 6,000 people left Santorini Island


Nearly 6,000 people, worried, left Santorini in 48 hours due to the repeated earthquakes which continue to shake the Greek tourist island on Tuesday and its neighbor Amorgos, a phenomenon that surprises scientists.

• Read also: Greece: new jolts in Santorini, residents sleep outside

• Read also: Greece: closed schools in Santorini after a series of earthquakes

Some 4,640 passengers have embarked on Sunday on Sunday on Sunday, departing from this volcanic island, known worldwide for its blue cupboards hung on the cliffs, according to a statement provided Tuesday to AFP by a Greek coast guard.

The main Greek airline Aegean Airlines said it had sent 1,294 passengers Monday from Santorini to Athens, ensuring a total of nine flights, including five exceptional.


[EN IMAGES]  Greece: 6,000 people left Santorini Island

AFP

On Tuesday day, two crossings must leave Santorini for the Piraeus, the large port near Athens and Aegean Airlines provides eight flights of »a total capacity of more than 1,400 seats”.

In a statement, the company said it could have transported in total between Monday and Tuesday 2,500 to 2,700 people.


[EN IMAGES]  Greece: 6,000 people left Santorini Island

AFP

Santorini has around 15,500 permanent residents and many seasonal workers in the hotel, catering or construction.

Files have been formed calm in front of travel agencies and before the start of the crossings, but no panic movement, AFP journalists have noted on the spot.


[EN IMAGES]  Greece: 6,000 people left Santorini Island

AFP

Reduced tourism

Tourist activity is reduced in this season in Santorini which receives more than 3 million visitors each year.

However, some tourists encountered in Fira, one of the main villages on the island, did not seem disturbed beyond measure despite the minimal tremors, which are felt at regular intervals.


[EN IMAGES]  Greece: 6,000 people left Santorini Island

AFP

“In Japan, as you know, every day we face earthquakes,” relativized Walter Saito, 43 years old, “not particularly worried”.

At the airport, the American Roger Beauchamp, from Arizona, also felt all day “small light jerks”. “We come from a place where (…) There have been great earthquakes in the past,” he adds.


[EN IMAGES]  Greece: 6,000 people left Santorini Island

AFP

Tuesday around 2:45 am local, a new earthquake of magnitude 4.9 was recorded in the Aegean Sea, some 31 km from Santorini, according to the Geodynamic Institute of the Athens Observatory.

Shortly after, a shock of 4.7 was repeated in the same area, about 19 km southwest of Amorgos, another tourist island of the Cyclades archipelago, where less than 2,000 permanent inhabitants live.


[EN IMAGES]  Greece: 6,000 people left Santorini Island

AFP

Other lower intensity earthquakes have been recorded and Greek scientists warn that this seismic activity, which has intensified since Saturday, could last weeks.

“Unprecedented”

“The scenario of earthquakes of magnitude 6 and more is unlikely,” insisted the president of the Organization for Antisism Planning and Protection (OASP), EFThymios Lekkas on the private television channel Mega.

“The inhabitants of Santorini must feel safe. We must not give in to panic, “he added, after Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called for calm residents.

According to him, “an earthquake of around 5.5 would have no consequences on the island”.

For the professor of seismology Kostas papazachos, these repeated earthquakes constitute an “unprecedented phenomenon for data from the Greek region”.

“We do not have a main earthquake, we have a sequence of many earthquakes,” he observed on the private television channel Ant1.

“We have never known this before,” added Athanassios Ganas, research director at the Athens Observatory, calculating: “We now have more than 41 earthquakes greater than 4 in a period of 72 hours” .

Current tremors are not the result of volcanic activity but of tectonic activity, have also hammered the authorities who ordered the precautionary closure of all the schools of Santorini, Amorgos and the neighboring islands until on Friday.

Santorini’s spectacular landscape was created by a volcanic eruption around 1,600 years before our era.



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