Although Santorini residents are used to feeling the ground shaking from time to time, the current seismic activity, that has seen over 7,000 earthquakes hit Greece’s most popular tourist island in just a week, has been described as an “extremely perplexing phenomenon” by the country’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
The most powerful, 5.1-magnitude, quake so far took place on Thursday, 6 February. It was reportedly felt all the way in Athens, Crete and even more than 240 kilometres away in parts of Türkiye. With dozens of other tremors with intensities between 4 and 5 taking place Thursday and Friday, over 10,000 residents and tourists have so far fled the island. The government has declared a state of emergency in Santorini at least until 3 March, with schools closed on the nearby islands as well.
#Santorini earthquakes time lapse graphic #seismic #σεισμος #Σαντορινη – credits @LastQuake pic.twitter.com/cIbaZOylSI
— CrisP (@crispSV) February 8, 2025
What makes people uneasy is the uncertainty of how the situation will evolve. People are concerned that the so-called “earthquake swarm” is leading up to a more powerful tremor, or, more worryingly, to a volcanic eruption. Scientists do not see any sign that the seismic activity is slowing down, neither can they tell weather something bigger is bound to happen.
Despite Mitsotakis trying to keep optimistic, telling a press conference that “no one can make predictions, but we are more optimistic today than we were yesterday,” seismologists are more cautions in their approach. While only about 5% of earthquakes are foreshocks to larger tremors, there is still an anxiety that there could be an acceleration to a much larger earthquake,” warned David Pyle, a volcanologist at the University of Oxford.
Oxford professor David Pyle says scientists are closely monitoring #Santorini’s volcanoes amid #earthquake activity, warning that a larger quake could trigger landslides or a tsunami. #WNews pic.twitter.com/5XdJEkBQ8s
— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) February 6, 2025
“We are not yet in a position to say that we are seeing any evidence that would lead to the sequence slowly coming to a conclusion,” said Vassilis K Karastathis, a seismologist and director of research at National Observatory of Athens. “We are still in the middle of the road, we haven’t seen any easing, any sign that it’s heading towards a regression.”
Concerning an impeding volcanic eruption, signs seem to be more promising. “Right now, the earthquake activity is focusing to the northeast. It’s not clustering underneath any of the volcanoes that we know,” explained Jonas Preine, a geophysicist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, warning however that the risk of the earthquakes moving towards the undersea volcanic chain and triggering eruptions still exists.
Moreover, Costas Synolakis, an expert of natural disasters, has said that while a big explosion of Santorini’s own volcano is unlikely, given it only takes place every 17,000 years, “we believe the volcano has small explosions on average every 50 years”. Since the last eruption took place in 1950, “we are within the timeframe” for another volcanic event. ““We have to watch the volcano very closely. We can’t rule out any scenario,” he told Skai TV.
Santorini’de kayalar düşmeye başladı.#deprem #Yunanistan #greece pic.twitter.com/4B6k1LdGKT
— İzmir Hava Durumu (@izmirhavadurmu) February 3, 2025
Santorini sits on the Hellenic Volcanic Arc, a region known for its seismic and volcanic activity, with the island’s particular landscape being shaped by one of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history, which occurred around 1600 BC. The explosion devastated the island, leaving behind its distinctive crescent-shaped caldera.
The most devastating earthquake in recent history struck Santorini on 9 July 1956, measuring 7.8 in magnitude, followed by a 7.2-magnitude aftershock. It triggered a 25-metre-high tsunami, resulting in the deaths of at least 53 people, with over 100 others injured, and the destruction of one-third of the island’s homes.
