选修6 Unit 5　The power of nature-（达标训练）【导学教程】2024旧教材老高考英语新编大一轮总复习（人教版）

[对应学生用书P428] Ⅰ.阅读理解 (2022·南京检测)Natural disasters take many different forms and can happen without warning. Earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, drought, typhoons and hurricanes are all natural disasters. The earthquake on December 26th, 2004 resulted is one of the worst natural disasters in living memory. It was a massive underwater quake and occurred in the Indian Ocean. This caused a huge tsunami to cross the Indian Ocean. It destroyed coastlines and communities and brought death and destruction to many people. The survivors needed fresh water, food and shelters as well as medical help. People from all over the world gave money so that towns and villages could be rebuilt. The surface of the earth is not always looked as it does today; it is moving continuously and has done so for billions of years. This is one cause of earthquakes, when one section of the earth collides with another. Scientists can predict where this might happen and the area between plates is called a fault line. However, earthquakes do not always happen on fault lines, which is why they are so dangerous and unpredictable. Volcanoes happen where the earth's crust is thin—lava, dust and gases erupt from beneath the earth. They can rise into a massive cone shape—like a mountain and erupt, or they can be so violent that they just explode directly from the earth with no warning. Hurricanes are extremely strong storms and often happen in the Caribbean. They cause high winds, huge waves, and heavy flooding and can cross hundreds of miles. Floods happen in many countries after very heavy rainfall. When rain pours for weeks at a time and rivers overflow, people and property can be trapped or simply washed away. Another kind of natural disaster is drought. This happens when there is no water—when it doesn't rain for a long time and rivers dry up. This causes crops to fail, animals to die and sadly, people to starve. All the disasters are very dangerous, but they are nowhere near the most dangerous. One type