Greece woke up this Wednesday under a tsunami alert that Greek authorities issued in the early hours as a precautionary measure after a magnitude 6 earthquake was recorded east of the island of Crete, which was also felt on other nearby islands as well as in Athens and Turkey, reports Efe. No damages have been reported so far
"There was a very small possibility of a tsunami occurring, and that's why we issued the alert, but fortunately nothing happened," confirmed a Civil Protection spokesperson around 08:30 local time.
At 02:36 local time (00:36 GMT), residents and tourists on this island and nearby islands of Karpathos and Kasos received a Civil Protection alert on their mobile phones urging them to "move away from the coasts immediately."
The earthquake occurred at 00:51 local time (22:51 GMT), with the epicenter 20 kilometers south of Kasos, and had a focal depth of 64 kilometers, reported the Athens Geodynamic Institute.
According to SKAI radio station, the tremor was also felt in Athens and in the islands of the Cyclades archipelago, further north, which in February were shaken for a month by thousands of daily earthquakes between the islands of Santorini and Amorgos.
The area around Crete is one of the most seismically active areas in Greece, as the famous 'Greek arc' passes south of this island, a submarine mountain chain shaped like an arc located at the southern limit of the Aegean plate, formed by the subduction of the African plate underneath.
Natural Disaster Management professor Efthimis Lekkas stated on Wednesday to the public broadcaster ERT that the earthquake "essentially occurred in the Greek arc and is not related to the Cyclades or Turkey earthquakes."
In neighboring Turkey, it was reported that a magnitude 6 earthquake shook the coast of Datça in the Mediterranean at the same time.
The Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) indicated that it occurred at 01:51 local time (22:51 GMT on Monday) about 155 kilometers south of the Datça district, in the province of Mugla.
Although it was felt in surrounding provinces such as Denizli, Antalya, Aydin, Izmir, Isparta, Burdur, and Manisa, the earthquake did not cause any damages, as stated by Turkish Minister of Environment Murat Kurum and Mugla Governor Idris Akbiyik.
"No negative incidents have been reported due to the earthquake that occurred in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Datça in our province. This is all we can say," Akbiyik wrote on social media.