300 buildings on Samos found unsafe to live in after quake

A total of 300 buildings on the Aegean island of Samos have so far been found to be temporarily unsafe to live in during a series of inspections by civil engineers after a major earthquake that hit the island last Friday.

The civil engineers went to island a few hours after the 6.7-magnitude tremor to assess the damage to buildings and to the island's ports and other infrastructure.

The wider area has recorded more than 100 aftershocks since Friday. On Monday, a quake measuring 4.1 on the Richter scale was recorded shosrtly before 2 p.m.

"To some degree, the sequence of aftershocks is unfolding normally but, in any case, even if there is a tremor measuring over 5 to 5.5 Richter, it will not have an effect on buildings as the region has withstood a quake 30 times larger," Professor Efthymios Lekkas, the head of the Antiseismic Protection Organisation, told radio station "Praktorio" on Monday.

Lekkas said that the aftershocks' sequence will be long and last many weeks, even months.