With vibrant culture, iconic gastronomy, beaches as far as the eye can see, and postcard-perfect white and blue buildings, it’s easy to understand why the beautiful Greek island of Santorini is high on many people’s travel bucket lists.

In the last decade, the Instagrammable island has become a viral destination, with its pristine beaches amassing celebrity fans. The Kardashians, Demi Moore, James Franco and Rafael Nadal are among the high profile figures who’ve found a home away from home on the volcanic island’s sparkling shores.

And with more affordable accommodation and dining options nestling amongst its high-end spots, Santorini has become beloved amongst the everyday vacationer, too.

But far beyond the picture-perfect life on the island, locals have had far more on their mind than the aesthetics of their buildings and cooking delicious, traditional Greek fare recently.

Instead, their lives have been put on hold by a series of earthquakes – 1,200 of them, with magnitudes up to 5.2 on the Richter Scale.

As a result, around 11,000 people have evacuated the island under the State of Emergency declared by the Greek government.

However, many locals have stayed put on the island, resilient in the face of the natural disasters that they are somewhat accustomed to.

Why? Because Santorini is located off the coast of mainland Greece, in the Aegean Sea – one of a number of islands that sit close to a handful of fault lines in an area known as the Hellenic Trench.

As an article in the National Geographic explains, this causes the islands to be rocked frequently – especially Santorini which, as a volcanic island, has a number of seismic factors of its own:

“To the south and west of Greece is the deepwater Hellenic Trench. There an ancient piece of dense oceanic crust is being swallowed by the underlying mantle. This descent isn’t calm, but chaotic, and the ongoing stress on the crust above is pulling Greece apart in multiple directions.

That tectonic pandemonium has led to the formation of spiderweb-like fault zones and myriad volcanoes, both below and above water. Scientists, aware of these hazards, keep a close eye on it all.”

However used to the seismic shakes the islanders are, however, even they have to admit that there is something unusual going on here.

And that is the sheer number of quakes.

Not only are the earthquakes not limited to one particular region, they are also getting stronger and showing little sign of stopping. This is unusual, the article continues:

“The pattern of quakes is unlike a classic earthquake sequence. Often, a fault ruptures and produces its strongest quake—the mainshock—which is then (usually) followed by a series of increasingly weaker aftershocks. But in this case, there is no clear mainshock.

Instead, the region is being rattled by a cornucopia of quakes of somewhat similar magnitudes—and, for several days, the quakes appeared to be getting stronger.”

With the evidence suggesting that rather than being caused by the island’s volcanoes, this strange pattern of earthquakes (known as a swarm) suggests that there is an unusual movement of fluid or gas among the cluster of fault lines in the region, the Greek government and Santorini locals are having to wait it out.

It is hoped among the scientific community that the activity among the tectonic plates will calm down, but there is always a risk that a much bigger quake is coming, or that the seismic activity will trigger a volcanic eruption.

And with Santorini rocked by a deadly, tsunami-causing quake just under seventy years ago, fingers are crossed across the region that fresh disaster isn’t on the cards, and that the small fishing island can get back to its charming ways again very soon.

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