Residents leave the earthquake-hit island in the Azores

With no idea when they will return, a retired couple poses for a photo outside their beloved home, before leaving São Jorge, an island in the Azores, Portugal, which is preparing for disaster after a series of small tremors.

Fatima and Antonio Soares, both in their 70s, decided to leave their home with dozens of local residents, this Saturday, a week after thousands of earthquakes began to rock the volcanic island in the mid-Atlantic.

Seismologists fear that more than 12,700 tremors, which measured 3.3 on the Richter scale, could trigger a volcanic eruption or a powerful earthquake.

“I asked the taxi driver to take a picture of us because I don’t know if my house will be the same when I come back,” Fatima said, as the couple waited at São Jorge airport for a flight to Terceira Island. nearby.

“The tears immediately started falling,” he said.

The couple, who were on the island when a massive earthquake struck in 1964, will be staying in a small hotel for now, but they hope to return to the island, which is home to about 8,400 people, as soon as possible.

“Leaving our house, at this age, is hard,” Antonio said.

Dozens of Sao Jorge residents also left early Saturday. The latest government figures showed that about 1,250 people left the island on their own on March 23 and 24.

The region’s volcanic seismic monitoring center, Civisa, raised the volcanic alert status to level four on Wednesday, meaning there is a “real possibility?” The volcano could erupt for the first time since 1808.