Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1. Focus on Vocabulary
1.1. Give the definitions to the following extreme weather events. Add
other words you know referring to the topic.
1
1. At least 180 people died and thousands were left homeless/roofless/alone as
the flood season opened in China, with the north-western Shaanxi province
the worst influenced/beaten/hit.
2. Food shortages/lacks/deficits grew worse in southern Africa, particularly in
Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia. Aridness/Drought, combined with
misgovernment and the confiscation of commercial farms in Zimbabwe, has
caused maize output to plunge and left millions in need of food aid.
3. A huge rescue operation/campaign/drive is underway, including army units
specially formed to deal with flood emergencies, but the number of dead is
expected to rise.
4. At least 150 people are related/reported/told dead, 266 are
missing/lacking/away and more than 110,000 need catastrophe/emergency aid
in Shaanxi province.
5. Up to 3,000 villagers are preparing to evacuate their northern Papua New
Guinea island after a volcano burst /broke out/erupted, raining acidic ash on
their homes.
6. Firefighters and other disaster/emergency/catastrophe workers were placed
on high mayday/alert/readiness.
7. The worst storms in 100 years hit/beat/attacked Chile this week, killing 11
and leaving thousands homeless.
8. A scope/scale/magnitude-5 quake can damage homes if it occurs close to the
earth's surface.
9. A wind-whipped wildfire prompted authorities to order the
evacuation/rescuing/removal of up to 40,000 people Monday from their
homes along the southwestern edge of the Denver metropolitan area.
2
6. A wildfire in the Rocky Mountains now covers 100,000 acres and has led to
several communities being evacuated.
7. Nearly 920 firefighters are working in shifts tackling the 20-mile blaze in
Colorado's foothills.
8. In Calcutta, a wall collapsed in a storm killing two people and injuring 15
others.
9. A strong earthquake has jolted Tokyo. There are no reports of serious damage
in the Japanese capital.
1.7. Read the four texts to follow and identify the natural disasters
discussed. Write out the words and phrases that helped you identify
the phenomena.
3
Four Austrian skiers missing after _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ in French Alps
Four skiers are missing after an _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ in the French Alps. At least
two of the people missing after the snow fall near Chamonix are believed to be
Austrian. Authorities fear the skiers have been buried under blocks of ice. The four
were believed to be wearing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ beacons, devices that emit signals to
help rescuers pinpoint a buried skier's location. A fifth person who was with the
group was found by rescuers shortly after the _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ and was flown by
helicopter to a hospital in Chamonix with serious injuries. "There is an enormous
amount of wind and the sky is overcast," said Captain Blaise Agretsy, commander
of the High Mountain Squad in the eastern French resort city Chamonix.
1.8. Match the following words and word combinations with the
Russian sentences.
4
to collapse, to burst banks, to rescue from the rubble, emergency shelter, to rip off,
to be left homeless, in living memory, to be reported dead, gale warnings, official
death toll, rescue work, to declare (impose) a curfew, epicenter
2. Focus on Texts
2.1. Read the following article and complete the exercises that follow.
TEZIUTLAN, Mexico — It did not even have a name, the storm responsible
for what the president called Mexico’s worst disaster of the decade. Its winds never
reached the tropical-storm speed that would have earned it more than a number.
But Tropical Depression No. 11 was deadlier than any hurricane in the region
this year.
So far, officials have confirmed 333 deaths. But by all accounts the true
number of dead is higher. Unofficial counts by local newspapers — based on
unconfirmed accounts from local officials and witnesses — ran as high as 600.
The full scale of the disaster is only slowly becoming apparent. A series of
weather fronts, capped by the tropical depression in the Gulf of Mexico, dumped
6
heavy rain on much of eastern, southern and central Mexico for a week or more. In
much of the region, it continues to rain.
Washed-out bridges and roads isolated hundreds of communities. Landslides
destroyed or damaged houses in dozens of towns and villages. People were carried
away by floodwaters.
Even large cities, such as the Tabasco state capital of Villahermosa, were so
gravely flooded that streets became canals for boats ferrying furniture from
inundated houses.
In Tenango, 100 miles northeast of Mexico City, a foot-wide crack appeared
in the face of a turn-of-the-century, U.S.-built dam, which towers 70 feet above the
town.
Authorities evacuated 3,000 residents and brought in a fleet of dump trucks to
pile gravel and rock mixed with lime in front of the dam. They worked into the
night Sunday.
“The engineers thought it was going to break,” said evacuee Jose Luis
Gonzalez, 40.
In Teziutlan, where the largest number of deaths have been recorded, rain fell
for 60 hours without a break — 30 inches in all, three-quarters of what New York
gets in an entire year.
The rain forced closure of schools and most of the 480 clothing factories that
make blue jeans and other goods for U.S. export.
So the residents of La Aurora, a poor neighborhood built under a cliffside
cemetery, were huddled at home rather than at work or school when the mudslide
rolled over their houses.
The rain had been pounding for three days when Dario Padilla left his house
and made the sodden trek to a shop to buy tortillas.
He was on his way back, with about 100 yards to go, when he saw the hillside
above his neighborhood collapse in an avalanche of mud. Within seconds his
house, the houses of two relatives and about 25 other neighbors’ homes were
buried.
His wife, his stepchildren and several grandchildren were among those killed.
“It took all my family in one blow,” said the 55-year-old retired postal worker,
his voice breaking as he watched ambulances carry victims to the morgue and a
series of funeral processions trudge into the cemetery next door.
“I went in but I sank in the mud. Some neighbors pulled me out,” he said.
By Sunday morning, rescue workers had pulled the corpses of 15 people from
the ruins of Padilla's house and his relatives' two homes.
The victims included his wife, five of his stepchildren and several
grandchildren and in-laws. Every member of his household was apparently killed.
On Sunday, hundreds of soldiers, policemen, firefighters and body-detecting
dogs were still slopping through mud made even more sodden by more heavy rain.
They scraped mud away from toppled concrete walls, then attacked the walls with
clanging picks and sledgehammers until the sick-sweet smell of decaying flesh told
them they were close to yet another victim.
7
At the town’s cathedral, the regional bishop, Monsignor Lorenzo Cardenas
Aregullin, led a Mass for the victims of the disaster, and read a message of
condolence from Pope John Paul II.
“Why does God conserve our lives?” the bishop asked. “So we can be human.
So we can help (the victims) however we can.”
Outside the cathedral, residents complained that government help had been
late in coming. When neighbors were pulling bodies from the muck on Tuesday,
they said, radio stations were reporting that there were no apparent problems in the
region. The military, which is leading the rescue effort, didn’t arrive until Thursday
afternoon.
Many have urged President Ernesto Zedillo to call for foreign aid, but Zedillo
has said: “The Mexicans can do it alone.”
He toured the stricken areas Friday and Saturday and pledged to send more
civilian and military personnel to help the victims throughout states along the Gulf
of Mexico.
“We won’t fail you,” he promised Saturday night.
Washington Post. 1999. 20 June.
officials have confirmed 333 deaths; unofficial counts by local newspapers […] ran
as high as 600; a series of weather fronts […] dumped heavy rain; washed-out
bridges and roads; the rain forced closure of schools; mudslide; rescue workers;
body-detecting dogs; to lead the rescue effort; to call for foreign aid; to tour the
stricken area
2.3. Read the following article and find the English equivalents to the
following Russian expressions in the text. Reproduce the article using
the phrases.
In the dark early hours of yesterday morning Hurricane Floyd gave a terrifying
reminder of why they call this corner of the country Cape Fear.
The vast wheeling storm — which had grown to the size of Britain and France
combined — had sent 3m Americans fleeing inland as it stroked the coasts of
Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
When it finally came ashore at Sam it was weakening and its winds were
dipping below 100mph, but it was still potent enough to rip roofs off barns and
dump more water on this tip of North Carolina than any storm in living memory.
Seven people were reported dead yesterday afternoon, mostly from car
accidents in the downpour. Tens of thousands were made homeless.
8
“It was roaring and raining so hard I couldn't hear anything else,” said Robert
James, a tobacco farmer in the small settlement of Boiling Spring Lakes. He did
not even hear Floyd cut his farmhouse in two.
As he spoke the floodwater was gathering at his feet, spluttering out of the
drains along the road to Cape Fear. Earlier in the morning the state governor,
James Hunt, declared the flood the worst in North Carolina's history and warned of
the dangers of venturing out in Floyd’s uncertain aftermath.
Further north the storm had reached as far as Maine and closed schools and
airports in Washington and New York as it drenched the east coast.
Just across the interstate highway from Robert James’s farm, seven people
who had taken refuge up the steps of the Town Creek church the previous night
had managed to escape the waters.
Paula Calkins sat on the front porch yesterday with her son Jeremy, looking
helplessly across the newly formed lake. Shouting to a journalist on the other side,
she said the flood had stopped rising at dawn, at the moment the water touched the
foot of the crucifix hanging on the church’s eastern wall.
The Calkins were not willing to tempt fate by wading through the water, which
Mr. James warned was teeming with venomous snakes.
A little further down Route 17 a rattlesnake could be seen on the edge of a
shallow pond covering the road, half squashed by a passing car but still writhing
furiously. Everywhere along the Carolinas’ coast the floodwater had driven
wildlife into human habitats.
Yesterday Hurricane Floyd gave the old southern city a wide berth of about
100 miles, but it still brought trees crashing down on to roads.
The city’s police declared a curfew from 7pm until 7am yesterday morning,
partly in an attempt to prevent looting.
Washington Post, 24 August 1999
2.4. Read the article and complete the exercises that follow.
9
But the two main lava flows produced by the volcano have begun to slow,
raising hopes that the worst of the eruption may be over.
The first eruptions occurred on Sunday, accompanied by earthquakes. The
strongest tremors were felt in the town of Santa Venerina, southeast of Etna, on
Tuesday, and measured 4.4 on the Richter scale. By co-incidence, a large
earthquake struck the town of San Giuliano di Puglia, hundreds of miles away in
southern Italy, on Thursday.
Etna is Europe's most volatile volcano and is almost constantly active. The
last activity was felt in July and August 2001 and the last major eruption was in
1992. Etna exhibits two kinds of eruptive activity: explosive eruptions from three
summit craters and smaller eruptions from fissures on the mountain's flanks.
2.10.2002 NewScientist.com
2.6. Insert prepositions and particles where necessary, then read the
text and check your answers.
15