美国有线新闻 CNN 2013-03-06

 First up today on CNN student news. This Florida resident was in his bedroom last Thursday. Suddenly the ground underneath¹ opened up and swallowed him. A sinkhole about 20 feet wide and 40-50 feet deep, formed underneath Jeff Bush's room. His brother Jeremy talked about what happened when it started.

"I heard a loud crash like car came into the house, and I heard my brother screaming, so I ran back there and tried going inside the room, but when I later turned the light on, all I see was a big hole, a big hole."

Jeremy Bush jumped into that hole to try to save his brother, but he couldn't find him. Officials called off their search on Saturday, partly because of the same reason why workers begin demolishing² the house. The sinkhole was expanding, and there were concerns the house might collapsed⁴ at any time. Sometimes sinkholes are smaller, they might cause the ground to sag⁵ or cause a small pond to form. Other times, they can be huge, like this one you're looking at right now from Guatemala, or the great blue hole, an underwater sinkhole off the coast of Belize.

Florida actually gets a lot of sinkholes, that's because of the ground across a lot of the state is made up of limestone⁶, a sedimentary rock. Nick Valencia explains how that can lead to the sinkhole.

How do sinkholes form? Well, let's break this down for you here. Sinkholes are usually a naturally occuring event, then what happens is that rain water, that heavy rain water, sort of sits on top of that bedrock sanding clay. If you taken to account Florida's landscape, it has got a lot of that of very porous⁷ limestone, that allows the rain, the acidic rain to sort of percolated⁸ down into the soil, forming these cave like sinkholes here. And also, sometimes, it's drought that causes these cave-like formations. And that's further the punctuated⁹ by that heavy rain that sort of sits on top of there causing this to open up and perhaps some of the scarest scenarios¹⁰, that in Florida is that, you can not predict sinkholes, it's highly expensive to predict them yet, you have to use very expensive equipment. And it's really tough to pinpoint¹¹ where these sinkholes are. In fact, it's so common about the currents in Florida, all of these little blue dots from freckled¹² upon and down the state of Florida. Our past instances of sinkholes, now what happened on Thursday night and early Friday morning in Hillsboro County at the Bush residents, this is the place that the Florida department of state says is a susceptible¹³ to abruptly¹⁴ forming collapse³ sinkholes, it's an area that's dominated by an area that's had problems with sinkholes in the past.

1 underneath   

adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面

参考例句：

• Working underneath the car is always a messy job.在汽车底下工作是件脏活。
• She wore a coat with a dress underneath.她穿着一件大衣，里面套着一条连衣裙。

2 demolishing   

v.摧毁( demolish的现在分词 )；推翻；拆毁（尤指大建筑物）；吃光

参考例句：

• The machine was designed specially for demolishing old buildings. 这种机器是专为拆毁旧楼房而设计的。 来自《用法词典》
• Conventional demolishing work would have caused considerable interruptions in traffic. 如果采用一般的拆除方法就要引起交通的严重中断。 来自辞典例句

3 collapse   

vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。

4 collapsed   

adj.倒塌的

参考例句：

• Jack collapsed in agony on the floor. 杰克十分痛苦地瘫倒在地板上。
• The roof collapsed under the weight of snow. 房顶在雪的重压下突然坍塌下来。

5 sag   

v.下垂，下跌，消沉；n.下垂，下跌，凹陷，[航海]随风漂流

参考例句：

• The shelf was beginning to sag beneath the weight of the books upon it.书架在书的重压下渐渐下弯。
• We need to do something about the sag.我们须把下沉的地方修整一下。

6 limestone   

n.石灰石

参考例句：

• Limestone is often used in building construction.石灰岩常用于建筑。
• Cement is made from limestone.水泥是由石灰石制成的。

7 porous   

adj.可渗透的，多孔的

参考例句：

• He added sand to the soil to make it more porous.他往土里掺沙子以提高渗水性能。
• The shell has to be slightly porous to enable oxygen to pass in.外壳不得不有些细小的孔以便能使氧气通过。

8 percolated   

v.滤( percolate的过去式和过去分词 )；渗透；（思想等）渗透；渗入

参考例句：

• Water had percolated down through the rocks. 水从岩缝间渗漏下去。
• The rumour percolated through the firm. 那谣言在公司里慢慢流传开来。 来自辞典例句

9 punctuated   

v.（在文字中）加标点符号，加标点( punctuate的过去式和过去分词 )；不时打断某事物

参考例句：

• Her speech was punctuated by bursts of applause. 她的讲演不时被阵阵掌声打断。
• The audience punctuated his speech by outbursts of applause. 听众不时以阵阵掌声打断他的讲话。 来自《简明英汉词典》

10 scenarios   

n.[意]情节；剧本；事态；脚本

参考例句：

• Further, graphite cores may be safer than non-graphite cores under some accident scenarios. 再者，根据一些事故解说，石墨堆芯可比非石墨堆芯更安全一些。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法
• Again, scenarios should make it clear which modes are acceptable to users in various contexts. 同样，我们可以运用场景剧本来搞清楚在不同情境下哪些模式可被用户接受。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓

11 pinpoint   

vt.准确地确定；用针标出…的精确位置

参考例句：

• It is difficult to pinpoint when water problems of the modern age began.很难准确地指出，现代用水的问题是什么时候出现的。
• I could pinpoint his precise location on a map.我能在地图上指明他的准确位置。

12 freckled   

adj.雀斑；斑点；晒斑；（使）生雀斑v.雀斑，斑点( freckle的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Her face was freckled all over. 她的脸长满雀斑。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Her freckled skin glowed with health again. 她长有雀斑的皮肤又泛出了健康的红光。 来自辞典例句

13 susceptible   

adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的

参考例句：

• Children are more susceptible than adults.孩子比成人易受感动。
• We are all susceptible to advertising.我们都易受广告的影响。

14 abruptly   

adv.突然地，出其不意地

参考例句：

• He gestured abruptly for Virginia to get in the car.他粗鲁地示意弗吉尼亚上车。
• I was abruptly notified that a half-hour speech was expected of me.我突然被通知要讲半个小时的话。