Hell in Paradise: A powerful landslide covered the popular Santorini resort (photo, video)

To spread: the famous white houses with blue roofs were covered with dust around the world, and tourists were fleeing in horror. The soil shift occurred six months after the earthquake. The huge shift of the soil struck into the sea on Santorini Island. The plot of land left the rocks in the village of Imerovigli, located on the top. Locals accuse an earthquake that occurred six months ago and intensive construction work, Protothema writes.

The shift happened after in the early 2025, more than 20,000 earthquakes occurred on the Paradise Island of Santorini, which attracts millions of tourists with its landscapes. The country was declared a state of emergency for a month, since earthquakes on the volcanic island took place every ten minutes, resulting in about 11,000 people - more than half of Santorini - were forced to leave their homes.

The combination of seismic activity and excessive construction is probably a potential cause of a recent landslide, since excessive construction has impaired soil integrity. The terrible footage taken by the inhabitants of Santorini, you can see how a huge cloud of thick dust covers a quiet town known for its whitewashed buildings with blue domes.

"Santorini is an island with vulnerable geomorphology, and when the pressure of excessive construction is added, the risk of shifts is increasing many times over," local experts who arrived at the scene said. The report states that the collapsed land has undergone a special load due to the construction of a new building.

According to Ehtimios Leckcas, Professor of Dynamic Tectonics and Geology of Athenian University, Santorini is prone to landslides through steep slopes, high seismicity and geological morphology of the island, which consists of volcanic, lava and pioxlastic rocks. Stones are easily destroyed, leading to soil instability. He added that the "uncontrolled" construction in the Caldera Santorini zone continues to expand, despite the plans of the Greek government to ban new structures.

As a result, the hotels are built on steep, dangerous slopes with weak rocky composition, which makes them vulnerable to shifts - especially in the conditions of increasing the number of underground shocks. Earlier this year, when the island was covered by earthquakes, Greek Prime Minister Kiriakos Carathakis announced the allocation of € 3 million for the construction of an emergency evacuation path from southern Santorini.

Hotel owners even had to drain the water from the pools because of the fears that the water that overflowed can destabilize the buildings in the event of an earthquake. Many of those who stayed on the island slept on the street on their mattresses, fearing to stay in their homes, which could collapse at any moment. We will remind, in addition to shifts, Europe is now suffering from forest fires. In Greece, the fire came close to the city of Patra, the third largest in the country.