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Are We Ready for Another Tsunami?
Introduction
海啸是一种具有强大破坏力的海浪。当地震发生于海底,因震波的动力而引起海水剧烈的起伏,形成强大的波浪,向前推进,将沿海地带一一淹没的灾害,称之为海啸。
Vocabulary
Tsunami n.海啸
high-rises n.高楼(注意前面用的是tall buildings)
temblor n.地震
holocaust n.大屠杀
universal time n.(=Greenwich Time)世界时间,格林尼治(平均)时
extensive 这里注意原文中“the most extensive tsunami warning system around”我们在写作的时候也可以这样用最大的什么机构组织。
tremor n.震动, 颤动
bulletin n.公告
evacuate v.疏散, 撤出, 排泄
fiasco n. 大惨败
dialects n.方言
本文比较长,建议只泛读
ArticleWednesday's massive earthquake near Indonesia was distressingly similar to the one that killed over 220,000 people in December of 2004. Both happened off the coast of Sumatra and put at least a dozen other countries at risk of tsunami. Yesterday’s magnitude-8.4 quake was smaller than the 9.1 of 2004, but only slightly. Tall buildings swayed in Jakarta, and some high-rises were evacuated in Singapore. And less than 24 hours later, the quake was followed by a second and third temblor in the same area, which brought buildings down in the coastal Indonesian city of Padang and triggered more tsunami warnings around the region.
So far, the damage appears to be much less serious than the 2004 disaster — thankfully. It’s too early to guess at a body count, but most of the destruction will probably come from the quakes themselves, not from a tsunami.
Three years after one of the worst disasters in history, though, the quakes pose worrisome questions: are we any more prepared? Has any progress been made in building better tsunami warning systems? Or can we expect another holocaust any day now?
One thing, at least, has changed dramatically. The first earthquake happened at 11:10 universal time. Although it occurred in the Indian Ocean, it was detected by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, headquartered in Hawaii, which has the most extensive tsunami warning system around — largely because the Pacific Ocean is where 70% of the world’s earthquakes normally happen.
The 2004 quake was quickly detected by the Pacific Center, too, so that’s no big deal unto itself. This time, though, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (and a Japanese warning system that also noticed the earthquake) knew what to do with the information. Fourteen minutes after the tremor, the Pacific Center sent a bulletin around the world, warning all at-risk nations that there might be a tsunami and estimating when it might strike, to the minute. Those channels of communication simply didn’t exist in 2004. Basic as it may seem, this across-the-water communication represents a huge breakthrough.
But a warning only helps if someone passes it along. And here’s where things get dicey all over again. "Presumably all of the countries should have gotten that bulletin in minutes," says Lori Dengler, a geology professor and tsunami expert at Humboldt State University in California. "Then it becomes an internal decision to decide whether to call a tsunami warning in their country. Because we’re dealing with sovereign nations, that makes it complex."
Each nation on the Indian Ocean has its own procedure — or lack thereof — for what to do next. They decide whether to issue a public warning, whether to call for an evacuation and how to do it in a way that people understand. In some places, like southern Bangladesh, a warning to evacuate was disseminated by police over loudspeakers four hours before the tsunami might have arrived, and many people rushed to high ground.
But in Indonesia, the last test run didn’t go so well. In July 2006, a major earthquake caused a tsunami, headed for Java. The Indonesian government received the alert, but the island of Java still had no real warning system. More than 600 people died.