Bishop of Sendai on nuclear threat

“We, living in Sendai have no idea of the real situation yet. You living in other countries have a much better idea of the tragedy”, says Bishop Martin Tetsuo Hiraga of Sendai diocese, one of the worst affected areas in Japan by the recent earthquake and tsunami.

Cut off without electricity since Saturday and with phone communications only restored Tuesday, Bishop Hiraga reveals that the people of Sendai are also unaware of the current situation regarding the Fukushima nuclear plant, situated a little over 100 km from the city and its residents. The plant is under round the clock surveillance after a third powerful explosion Tuesday morning, from reactor No. 2. Experts from the UN’s atomic energy agency and from the US are on their way to help Japanese teams find ways to establish the cooling system, damaged during the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and stave off a possible fusion.

“We are terrified”, reveals bishop Hiraga. “We only have the government announcements, we have no other source of information. We don’t even know what has happened to our parishes in the towns and villages along the coast. We have no way of contacting them. I can only hope that the people of my diocese can stand together and be strong enough to overcome this disaster”. Listen:

(In photo) Sendai residents check for updates at the Miyagi Prefecture building, Sendai, Japan, 14 March 2011. Many people spend their days in the Prefecture building as they believe this will be the first place to exercise evacuations should the radiation from Fukushima power plant become hazardous. The magnitude of the 11 March earthquake that hit the Eastern coast of Japan has been revised upward to magnitude 9.0 instead of the previously thought 8.9 magnitude