VOA标准英语2010年-San Franciscans Wonder What Set Off th

The California city's history of quakes keeps worry just below the surface

Ted¹ Landphair | Washington, DC 25 January 2010 
You had better believe that the people of San Francisco are taking careful note of the cataclysmic Haitian earthquake and its aftermath.  This past October marked the 20th anniversary of a killer² quake that struck their city in hilly northern California.  Like Port-au-Prince, San Francisco sits along a fault line where plates in the earth's crust grind together.

Olivander, Flickr Creative Commons
Pennsylvania writer Charles Morris rushed to San Francisco immediately after the Great Quake of 1906. He produced a book filled with gripping, firsthand accounts of the devastation³

Sixty-two people died in the 1989 quake. That's a small fraction of the toll⁴ that's estimated in Haiti.

But in 1906 another earthquake hit San Francisco.  Then, the city was much less developed and protected and the fires that followed destroyed the heart of the city.  Officially, 503 people lost their lives.  As in Haiti, the true number was much higher, since the quake struck hardest in Chinatown, an area of flimsy structures packed with thousands of undocumented immigrants.

The 2010 Port-au-Prince and 1989 San Francisco earthquakes were nearly identical in intensity⁵ at a magnitude of about 7.0.  The 1906 San Francisco quake struck 29 years before the Richter scale was adopted, but seismograms from the time have been interpreted at a magnitude of 8.3.  If that's accurate, the Great San Francisco Quake was more than 10 times the strength of the Haiti temblor.

 
Carol M. Highsmith
The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is lovely at dawn – but chaos⁶ ensued during afternoon rush hour on October 17, 1989, when a 15x23 meter section of the upper deck crashed to the deck below

Many people you meet in the so-called 'City by the Bay' publicly shrug⁷ off the odds⁸ of another earthquake.  They stabilize⁹ their buildings as much as possible and trust in fate.

Privately¹⁰, though, they wonder what devastation a super-quake would wreak¹¹.  When a Haiti scale quake strikes elsewhere or the earth shakes enough to get the city's tallest building, the Transamerica Pyramid, swaying, you don't hear as many jokes about what San Franciscans call the Big One.

Read more of Ted's personal reflections and stories from the road on his blog, Ted Landphair's America.
 

1 ted   

vt.翻晒，撒，撒开

参考例句：

• The invaders gut ted the village.侵略者把村中财物洗劫一空。
• She often teds the corn when it's sunny.天好的时候她就翻晒玉米。

2 killer   

n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者

参考例句：

• Heart attacks have become Britain's No.1 killer disease.心脏病已成为英国的头号致命疾病。
• The bulk of the evidence points to him as her killer.大量证据证明是他杀死她的。

3 devastation   

n.毁坏；荒废；极度震惊或悲伤

参考例句：

• The bomb caused widespread devastation. 炸弹造成大面积破坏。
• There was devastation on every side. 到处都是破坏的创伤。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 toll   

n.过路(桥)费；损失，伤亡人数；v.敲(钟)

参考例句：

• The hailstone took a heavy toll of the crops in our village last night.昨晚那场冰雹损坏了我们村的庄稼。
• The war took a heavy toll of human life.这次战争夺去了许多人的生命。

5 intensity   

n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度

参考例句：

• I didn't realize the intensity of people's feelings on this issue.我没有意识到这一问题能引起群情激奋。
• The strike is growing in intensity.罢工日益加剧。

6 chaos   

n.混乱，无秩序

参考例句：

• After the failure of electricity supply the city was in chaos.停电后，城市一片混乱。
• The typhoon left chaos behind it.台风后一片混乱。

7 shrug   

v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等)

参考例句：

• With a shrug,he went out of the room.他耸一下肩，走出了房间。
• I admire the way she is able to shrug off unfair criticism.我很佩服她能对错误的批评意见不予理会。

8 odds   

n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别

参考例句：

• The odds are 5 to 1 that she will win.她获胜的机会是五比一。
• Do you know the odds of winning the lottery once?你知道赢得一次彩票的几率多大吗？

9 stabilize   

vt.（使）稳定，使稳固，使稳定平衡；vi.稳定

参考例句：

• They are eager to stabilize currencies.他们急于稳定货币。
• His blood pressure tended to stabilize.他的血压趋向稳定。

10 privately   

adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地

参考例句：

• Some ministers admit privately that unemployment could continue to rise.一些部长私下承认失业率可能继续升高。
• The man privately admits that his motive is profits.那人私下承认他的动机是为了牟利。

11 wreak   

v.发泄；报复

参考例句：

• She had a burning desire to wreak revenge.她复仇心切。
• Timid people always wreak their peevishness on the gentle.怯懦的人总是把满腹牢骚向温和的人发泄。