Officials on the Greek island of Santorini have ordered schools to stay closed Monday, rescue teams with sniffer dogs on call, swimming pools emptied for some reason, and for locals to stay the hell away from any cliffs on Sunday after a swarm of more than 200 earthquakes – the strongest a 4.6 magnitude at 3:55 pm local time this afternoon – have rocked the southern Aegean region since Friday, the AP reports on some rumbling under the site of a freaking apocalyptic volcanic eruption believed to have occurred circa 1600 BC that wiped out the Minoan city of Akrotiri.
The AP’s article says “earthquake experts say the more than 200 tremors that have hit the area since early Friday are not related to the volcano in Santorini, which once produced one of the biggest eruptions in human history,” which seems a little incongruous with past events elsewhere, even if the depth of that 4.6 magnitude was 14 kilometers when magma-driven tremors tend to be shallower. Like how often does a volcanic caldera get hit with 200 quakes in three days but it has nothing to do with the volcano itself? Moreover, what seismically active area that isn’t also volcanically active can have a swarm like that? Natural seismicity. Oklahoma doesn’t count.