Biggest quake has not occurred yet at 'Instagram island' of Santorini in Greece

Santorini [Greece], February 8 (ANI): The seismic activity at Santorini and other Greek islands is not over and the biggest quake has not happened yet, a seismologist has warned, CNN reported.

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Remy Bossu, Secretary-General of the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre, said "days, or perhaps, weeks" would be needed to evaluate the series of earthquakes but said that the series of quakes typically occur in the build-up to a larger tremor, as per CNN.

A state of emergency has been declared in the "Instagram island" of Santorini amid a series of near-constant tremors in recent days, which caused the visitors to evacuate the island.

The largest tremor so far was recorded on Wednesday evening, when a quake with a magnitude of 5.2 coursed through the island. It was the first to exceed 5.0 magnitude on Richter Scale since the tremors began last week, CNN reported.

Sitting near the boundary of the massive African and Eurasian tectonic plates, Santorini often experiences seismic activity, but rarely so intensely for so long. As well as Santorini, the nearby islands of Amorgos and Ios have also been shaken.

As the earthquakes continued, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis made a brief visit to the island on Friday morning to inspect emergency preparations, CNN reported.

"I want to assure the residents of Santorini and the neighbouring islands, which are being tested these days, that the state mechanism is on their side," he said, as per CNN.

"We hope this phenomenon ends quickly and the island fully returns to its normal pace," he said.

Bossu described the current seismic activity rocking Santorini - which is known as an "earthquake swarm" - as "very unusual." Normally, he told CNN, "what you observe is a large earthquake followed by aftershocks which decrease with time in magnitude and frequency.

"Here, we observe a very different (phenomenon). We see that the magnitude has been increasing with time and the rate has been increasing, so this is not typical behavior," he told CNN. (ANI)

(The story has come from a syndicated feed and has not been edited by the Tribune Staff.)