No Pinoys hurt in Japan quake

MANILA, Philippines - No Filipinos were hurt in the 7.1-magnitude quake that hit Japan last Thursday, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said yesterday.

In its report to the DFA, the Philippine embassy in Tokyo said it had contacted Filipino community leaders in Miyagi and Iwate prefectures hit by aftershocks and was informed that there were no Filipino casualties in this recent quake.

Two Japanese, however, were reported dead in the incident.

This developed as the Philippine Permanent Mission to the United Nations reported that no changes have been observed at the on-site radiation monitoring posts at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and the injection of water into the reactor pressure vessels of Units 1, 2 and 3 was not interrupted.

It said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in a briefing for the diplomatic missions in Vienna, reported that the earthquake that occurred in Japan last April 7 was at 7.1 magnitude, not 7.4.

The epicenter of the quake was at 20 kilometers from the Onagawa nuclear power plant and about 120 kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini plants.

At the Onagawa nuclear power plant, all reactors have been shutdown since the March 11 earthquake, the IAEA said.

But two of the three lines supplying power to the site were lost after the April 7 earthquake, it said.

Off-site power continues to be supplied through the third line while the cooling of the spent fuel pool was temporarily lost, but subsequently restored.

The IAEA said based on its latest monitoring, the over-all trend shows decreasing levels of gamma dose rates in the prefectures surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Last April 7, low levels of deposition of both iodine-131 and cesium-137 were detected in five and four prefectures.

The IAEA said the values for iodine-131 ranged from 3.8 to 20 Becquerel per square meter and 9.7 to 25 Becquerel per square meter for cesium-137.

In Fukushima, a dose rate of 2.3 microSievert/hour was reported while for the Ibaraki prefecture a gamma dose rate of 0.16 microSievert/hour was recorded, the IAEA said.

The situation at the plant remains “very serious” and workers continue to implement emergency measures, it added.

To prevent discharge of contaminated water from the Fukushima plant to the open sea, construction work was started at the breakwater in the southern part of the plant last April 5.