Atsushi and I were woken up by an earthquake early this morning around 5am. Hubbie’s phone said this had a magnitude of around 4 with epicenter at Tokyo Bay – closer to home. This is the first time that we’re having an earthquake from another epicenter after having had experienced a hundred or so aftershocks from Friday’s 9.0 magnitude earthquake  with the epicenter in Tohoku region.

It made me and Hubbie cling to each other more, the both of us getting fearful each time we had to get separated because he has to go to the office. Except for when he has to go to the office, we go everywhere together now; even when we just have to buy some items in the konbini or buy our dinner supplies.

Was alone in our apartment when the quake hit last Friday. Thankfully, our building is quite new (hence more “earthquake-proofed”) and our unit is on the 2nd floor hence I felt the shaking more from the ground and that it was not amplified because of height. Not unlike Hubbie and the rest of our officemates who are in our 36-floor office building (Hubbie’s department is located on the 27th so they definitely had their fill of the amplified swaying). Still though, the first major earthquake was vertical and took almost 4 minutes so whether you are on the ground or elevated, the vertical movement can be fully felt. I was in front of my laptop then when the shaking started and after a minute passed and the ground was still shaking quite vigorously, I was already thinking if I was able to fully make my loved ones feel how much i loved them.

After the 4 minute-big one, there were a series of strong aftershocks, making me doubt the stability of the buildings already. Hubbie told me to go to the nearby park which is considered as the safe place to be during earthquakes, it being an open area. But mobile phone is not working anymore and I would rather stay connected with Hubbie so I decided to stay rooted in front of my laptop to keep connected with him. I really don’t have to worry about any furniture in our house falling on me as we don’t have any furnitures yet. We are still in the process of cleaning/organizing our house that’s why everything is actually still on the floor. So I just have to brace myself for the shaking and, well, the roof caving in on me.

Yes, we had the greatest scare of our lives last Friday and over the weekend as hundreds of aftershock tremors still continued well into Sunday. And again, we had another scare early this morning. But we’re still thankful that what we experienced was only the tip of the iceberg. We only had a “scare”. Whereas the others in Tohoku region had to live the nightmare, had to experience the full blunt of the earthquake, the Giant Tsunami, and now the Fukushima Nuclear Power plant problems.

We think of the people getting washed back to the shore now, after days of floating in the open sea. The tides are bringing them back in, like driftwoods and plastics. Only, they had lives they led before, they loved and were loved, they had dreams, they had joys. And even for those who survived, yes we are thankful, but they have to be provided with the basic amenities ASAP, especially now that it’s still freezing temperature up there in the northeast area.

We’re still in the process of organizing our home hence we still don’t have a TV. We updated ourselves using the radio (oh what era we live in! hehe) and the internet. But the images we see are more than enough to break our hearts. And nowadays, I keep myself updated on the news for the Fukushima Nuclear Plants albeit a Chernobyl-like case is near impossible, thankfully and hopefully. At the time of writing, units 1 and 3 of the Dai-ichi plant were almost stable after depressuring steam. Operators are now in full attention on Unit 2 though, which seems to be in a worse state than the other 2 units aforementioned. Please, let them be able to keep the reactors cool. Spray it with seawater directly, albeit it may have repercussions later on power supply as the reactors would then be unrecoverable after being sprayed with seawater. I have good faith in the Japanese being good engineers. The precautions they had on using a container housing for the reactors and not using graphite helped a lot for this case not to become like the Chernobyl disaster. Still though, it’s a race against time. And unless it will be cooled down and stabilized, we worry.

That reminds me though of the absolute idiocy of the Malacanang order(??) to check the supplies coming from Japan for any radioactive material. Seriously?? Any scientist/engineer would really laugh at this purely nonsense order.

Anyways, please do visit this blog for photos and videos of the debacle and on how you can make your donations:

http://supporttohoku.blogspot.com/

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PRV (pressure relief valve) didn’t work that’s why unit 2 reactor was in worse case than the other two reactors (wherein they were able to reduce the pressure by venting steam to the atmosphere. The blasts previously reported on units 1 and 3 were inevitable result of this venting out of steam by the way, since the hydrogen from the steam reacted with the oxygen in the atmosphere). This news about the 2nd reactor is really quite alarming…

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/world/asia/15nuclear.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp