听遍美国之空难性新闻[4]:20th Anniversary of Mt. St. Helens Eruption
Twenty years ago a massive(1) blast(2) sideways from Mount St. Helens vaporized(3) forests in five thousand degree heat, flattened(4) hundreds of miles of timberland, and killed 57 people, many of whom vanished(5) beneath【在…下面】tons of ash.
“We first thought it was a forest fire or something; then all of a sudden, we realized it was the mountain.”
“And you could see it churning【搅动;翻腾】churning and boiling, and you can actually hear it, just kind of a rumble【轰隆声】. So we were actually right under it.”
Scientists who watched it blow now say the eruption(6) began with a modest earthquake(7) enough to loosen the already unstable mountainside.
Peter Lipman (of the US Geological Survey) : “And that released the pressure that was holding the molten【熔化地】 rock inside the volcano(8) and then a number of seconds after, they observed the beginning of the landslide(9), they saw the first ash cloud come out and the big explosions begin.”
Mt. St. Helens stunned(10) scientists with its ferocity【凶猛；残暴】; so much so it is now the most studied volcano in the world.
Peter Lipman : “The events on May 18 involved an earthquake, a landslide, a horizontally (11)directed explosion, a vertically(12) directed explosion. And the resulting deposits are immensely(13) complicated(14) .”
Scientists rush to Mt. St. Helens in the spring of 1980 to study what was then just a rumbling mountain. Lipman’s fellow scientist and friend David Johnston died in the blast. Johnston is memorialized outside his old office with a chunk【木板】 of the volcano he died studying.
Now tourist helicopters fly over the volcano’s edge. About three million people per year visit the one hundred thousand acre national preserve【保护区】.
Much of the land will look this way for centuries. But amid the dust, life returns, sometimes flourishes(15).
Bob Andrew (of the US Forest Service ): “It is beautiful. Wildflowers all over. We have lots and lots of wild elk and deer. In fact we have more deer than we had before.”
The fury of Mt. St. Helens has turned scientists’ attention to Oregon’s Mount Hood to the south and to Washington’s Mount Rainier. Both are geologic cousins. Both are capable of the same thing. Grey Lefay, CNN San Francisco.
听音瓶颈词汇
1.massive adj.巨大的；大规模的
2.blast n.爆炸；爆发
3.vaporize v.使蒸发
4.flatten v.使平坦；摧毁
5.vanish v.消失
6.eruption n.(火山)爆发;(熔岩的)喷出
7.earthquake n.地震
8.volcano n.火山
9.landslide n.滑坡
10.stun v.使大吃一惊；使目瞪口呆
11.horizontally adv.地平地；水平地
12.vertically adv.垂直地；直立地
13.immensely adv.极大地；广大地
14.complicated adj.复杂的；难懂的
15.flourish v.茂盛；繁茂
听音高级短语
all of a sudden 突然
a number of 一些
be capable of 能够；有能力
听音超级句型
Eruption began with a modest earthquake enough to loosen the already unstable mountainside.
爆发开始时伴有轻微的地震，使本来不够稳固的山体变得更加松弛。
A number of seconds after, they observed the beginning of the landslide, they saw the first ash cloud come out and the big explosions begin.
数秒钟后，他们发现山体开始滑坡，第一股浓烟溢出，然后爆炸随之而来。
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