The earthquakes of up to 5.2 prevail this Thursday in Santorini. While the strong winds in the area keep the ships tied in the port, the last inhabitants that remain on the island prepare to leave it by air.

The Skai station reported that departure from at least 11,000 people in recent days has caused Santorini to look like a “ghost island.” A year, this destination receives more than 3 million tourists.

Santorini, which is one of the most photographed islands of the Mediterranean for its impressive volcanic boiler, has 15,000 residents officially, although it is estimated that another 10,000 people live there without being registered.

In its capital, Fira, and the tourist town of Oia reigns an unprecedented silence and just no one walks through its picturesque alleyways, many of which have been closed to the passage with safety ribbons due to the risk of landslides of buildings.

Very few tourists remain on this island of the Cycling Archipelago, in the Aegean Sea, along with some 4,000 residents, many of which are also scheduled to leave it this Thursday with extraordinary flights.

Santorini tourists and residents leave the island during the increase in seismic activity. EFE/O. Panagiotou

At 19.09 GMT on Wednesday there was about 17 kilometers southwest of the nearby island of love an earthquake of magnitude 5.2, the strongest produced in the area since the high seismic activity began on January 24.

In the coastal town of Monolithos, the locals are raising dikes with sandbags to protect the buildings in front of the sea.

What they fear is a possible tsunami caused by a stronger earthquake, such as the magnitude 7.5 that in 1956 caused a 30 -meter wave that caused the death of 53 people.

More than 6,400 earthquakes have registered in the maritime zone between Santorini and Amorgos between January 26 and February 3, of which about 800 had a magnitude greater than 2.5, according to the University’s Seismology laboratory of Athens.

The majority of psychologists and geologists indicate that the possibilities of an earthquake from a magnitude greater than 6 are few, although they agree that the earthquakes will continue to shake the island for a few weeks, perhaps months.

Meanwhile, during the last days “surface movements are observed in the northern part of the boiler of the volcano” of Santorini, according to images of the European Sentinel-2 satellite analyzed by the professor of geology at the University of Salaónica, Mijalis Fumelis.

“For some time we have detected some signs of change in the volcano with respect to its previous state of calm,” Fumelis said in the state agency AMNA, although he stressed that in 2011 there had been a similar activity of the volcano that finally stopped Without producing an eruption.

In what all experts coincide, it is that this seismic activity is due to the movement of tectonic plates in the underwater failure of Ándros, located between Santorini and amoros, and not to the two volcanoes in the area, although this does not mean that Tremors cannot rekindle volcanic activity.

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(Tagstotranslate) Earthquakes