PBS高端访谈:在墨西哥中部 地震幸存者面临巨大的损失

 　　It's early Saturday morning in Ocuilan, Mexico and Faustino Jimenez hopes he won't be delivering more bad news.

　　He's an volunteer engineer, trained by the Mexican civil defense¹ force.

　　Hundreds of homes have been damaged or destroyed in this area.

　　Jimenez's job is to decide which ones can be saved and which ones must be demolished².

　　The Garcia family lives in this modest two story house.

　　86-year-old Catalina Hernandez Vargas raised her two children here. They grew up and raised kids of their own.

　　Over the decades, the family and the house expanded three generations under one roof.

　　Today, Jimenez will determine whether they can stay any longer.

　　Ocuilan is in a rural, mountainous area in Mexico state, about 60-miles southwest of Mexico City.

　　There are no tall structures here, so only two people died in the quake.

　　Dozens more were injured. Mayor Felix Alberto Linares toured the wreckage³ of an 18th century Catholic church.

　　The balloons remain from a celebratory feast a few weeks before the quake hit. It's not clear if the church can be saved.

　　The issue here is that we can't let the effects of the earthquake be forgotten after a few weeks or a month.

　　We are going to be following up with those who lost their home so we can help them rebuild.

　　Everywhere we went, we saw similar damage. In a neighboring town, its historic church is cracked and crumbled⁴.

　　In the tiny hillside town of Tlatempa, an estimated 75 percent of the homes are badly damaged or destroyed.

　　Back at the Garcia home, it's what everyone feared: their home is too dangerous to live in.

　　Twenty-two-year-old noemi was born and raised in this house.

　　My parents' house cracked and they told us we had to evacuate⁵. They say everything is going to collapse⁶.

　　We have to find another place to live because the ground could keep shaking. Nothing is easy. We don't know what's going to happen next.

　　Jimenez's team immediately begins helping⁷ them pack up their belongings⁸. Noemi's father, Edilberto Garcia Hernandez, is a local policeman,

　　My parents built the first two rooms of this house. When I earned enough money, I built more onto it, the little I could. But we are poor.

　　His mother has slept in the house since she was a teenager

　　I thought of asking god to just let me die. I don't want to live through any more of this.

　　We have suffered, and I don't want to suffer anymore.

　　For Faustino Jiminez, these days are the worst part of his job.

　　Emotionally, this work breaks you. It's very difficult.

　　You can't just tell someone with a cold heart that they have nowhere to live. But our job is to save lives.

　　In two hours, all the Garcia's belongings are stacked outside.

　　They'll stay with a relative tonight but beyond that they just don't know.

　　I feel destroyed. It feels like these are the last days on earth. We have no idea what's going to happen. undefined

1 defense   

n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩

参考例句：

• The accused has the right to defense.被告人有权获得辩护。
• The war has impacted the area with military and defense workers.战争使那个地区挤满了军队和防御工程人员。

2 demolished   

v.摧毁( demolish的过去式和过去分词 )；推翻；拆毁（尤指大建筑物）；吃光

参考例句：

• The factory is due to be demolished next year. 这个工厂定于明年拆除。
• They have been fighting a rearguard action for two years to stop their house being demolished. 两年来，为了不让拆除他们的房子，他们一直在进行最后的努力。

3 wreckage   

n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏

参考例句：

• They hauled him clear of the wreckage.他们把他从形骸中拖出来。
• New states were born out of the wreckage of old colonial empires.新生国家从老殖民帝国的废墟中诞生。

4 crumbled   

（把…）弄碎， （使）碎成细屑( crumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 衰落； 坍塌； 损坏

参考例句：

• He crumbled the bread in his fingers. 他用手指把面包捻碎。
• Our hopes crumbled when the business went bankrupt. 商行破产了，我们的希望也破灭了。

5 evacuate   

v.遣送；搬空；抽出；排泄；大(小)便

参考例句：

• We must evacuate those soldiers at once!我们必须立即撤出这些士兵！
• They were planning to evacuate the seventy American officials still in the country.他们正计划转移仍滞留在该国的70名美国官员。

6 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。

7 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

8 belongings   

n.私人物品，私人财物

参考例句：

• I put a few personal belongings in a bag.我把几件私人物品装进包中。
• Your personal belongings are not dutiable.个人物品不用纳税。