‘Everyone is on tenterhooks’: Santorini streets empty after days of tremors

Thousands of locals and tourists have fled Greek island amid fears of bigger earthquake or volcanic eruption

On the second day of feeling the ground shake under her feet, Veroniki Balabonidi decided it was to time to leave Santorini. At 4.30am on Sunday she and her two young children were on a ferry bound for the port of Piraeus, surrounded by other families fleeing the Aegean isle.

It was absolutely packed with residents like us who had had enough of the uncertainty," she said, speaking from the home of her parents-in-law in Athens.