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Rampaging Rivers  
  Pinatubo awoke on June 15th and exploded in an eruption ten times the size of Mt St Helens. Pyroclastic flows of white, hot ash and gas scoured the hillside—and ash clouds rose forty kilometers into the atmosphere.

  On the volcano's slopes, seven cubic kilometers of pulverized rock now lay in drifts hundreds of feet thick, totally reshaping the landscape.

  One of the first dangers is falling debris collecting on houses and causing roofs to collapse. In fact that was the main killer for this eruption. The eruption had coincided with the annual Typhoons that regularly lash the Islands. Heavy rainfall drummed on the hot and loosely packed volcanic debris. It was to be the start of a terror that would haunt the people here long after the eruption ceased, Lahars.

  Imagine a truck delivering wet concrete. That is the consistency of a Lahar. But expand that material to millions of cubic meters of debris—all moving at the same time—and you have a Lahar.

  40 kilometers downstream from Mount Pinetubo is the town of Bacalor. Years after the eruption ceased, this town still suffers the onslaught of Lahars. Most of its population of 80,000 have departed to resettlement camps.

  About twenty per cent of the population of Bacalor never left. They had been written off many times but the people remained. There is almost a fanatic adherence to the site.

  Every year when the rains come new Lahars swamp the town raising the land ever higher. Still people rebuild their homes.

  Some of them have houses that they've raised two or even three times. And some people gave up, and others raised it a fourth time.

  When I come back here I feel frustration and a sense of anger because Lahars are not mysterious; we understand how they work. We know what they can do.

  Bacalor was originally a township of twenty-one large villages. Today only three remain.

  Here we are looking at a village that was buried by Lahars in 1991. In 1994 and 1995 Lahars came through here and carved this large channel that we see not only exposing these houses to view, but making new lahars.

  The broken remains of Mount Pinetubo are silent now. But its legacy of volcanic ash lied heavy on its slopes. Just 20 minutes of heavy rain, can generate a Lahar. It is not unusual to have eighteen Typhoons a year. So Philippine scientists constantly monitor the weather on the mountain's slopes. Thousands of Lahars have occurred, and all were triggered by Typhoon rain. To combat the threat, a huge dyke system has now been constructed. Its purpose is to contain and channel the lethal flows away from villages.

  Some crater lakes give no hint of their hidden secrets. This is Lake Nyos In Cameroon, West Africa. It doesn't even look like a crater lake. It sits in the mouth of a volcano that erupted for the first and only time 500 years ago. Yet Nyos has proved the most deadly of all crater lakes in recent times. Today, no one lives in the valley below the lake. All that's left of the villages and farms that once flourished here are a few ruins—and a faint dirt track. In 1986—as today—Father James Nielen was a catholic missionary. Nyos village—though over the mountains—was in his parish, and a favorite place of his.

  It was a very free atmosphere. I love to be there, now because there was always dancing and joy and well just nice people. Almost like gypsy people kind of thing. He knew the villagers well—especially the Mission school teacher, Vincent and his family. But one day in August, word came that something strange had happened in Nyos. By Saturday morning he had decided to go and see for himself. Taking his parish assistant Hortensia with him, they together made the arduous three- hour walk over the mountain. As they reached the outskirts of the normally busy village of Nyos, they began to feel very uneasy...

  It was very very silent, very quiet. No animals, no birds, nothing. In the first house, at the edge of the market square, they discovered why.

  All people inside were dead. Even some were lay outside, dead. So Father said we should just proceed ahead until we reached the Mission.

  All they walked through the silence of this valley of death, everywhere they found evidence of lives interrupted. Whole families frozen in gruesome tableaux.

  When we entered one compound, all the big people inside there were dead. The person who was cooking a very big pot of fufucorn, was standing there like that, as if she is alive.

  Within days of the tragedy in the Nyos Valley, experts were out on the crater lake unraveling the mystery. They found the lake water itself held a sinister secret. It contains huge quantities of dangerous gasses that seep out of the volcanic rocks below. It takes 15 minutes for the gas sampler to reach the bottom. For the lake is two hundred meters deep. In the depths of the lake—under pressure—vast quantities of carbon dioxide can accumulate, like gas in a bottle of soda. The August night, a cliff collapse knocked the top off the bottle… In a tremendous explosion, the gas burst out of the lake. Because it was heavier than air, it poured down the hillside into the valley below. The people of Nyos did not stand a chance. The carbon dioxide swept into their homes and they were suffocated where it found them.

  This is a picture of a mass grave outside a small compound in Nyos village. For me it was very different from the scene just a year ago, where I walked up to the lake through a valley full of activity and life.

  The year before George Kling had taken part in a survey of all Cameroon's lakes. The water samples they took at Lake Nyos gave no hint that the lake was dangerous.

  We went up there to the lake and took all our samples from the shore, such a beautiful lake, and it was a nice hot day. We went swimming in the lake. Not knowing what was underneath the lake. So from the surface it just looked like a normal lake and we couldn't tell anything about what is happening at the bottom.

  The gas explosion had altered the lake beyond recognition—it had stripped the shores of vegetation and turned the water bright orange.

  Nothing can stop the gas seeping out of the volcanic rocks beneath the lake. The gas concentration have been increasing steadily and there is now much more gas in the lake than we estimate was released in the 1986 disaster. It's essentially a time bomb waiting to go off and the fuse is lit but we just don't know how long the fuse is.


咆哮的江河

  六月十五日,Pinatubo火山爆发,其规模是圣海伦斯火山的十倍。炙热的白灰和毒气形成碎屑流冲下山,火山灰的云柱高达40千米。

  7立方千米的碎石堆积在山坡上,厚达上百英尺,彻底改变了地貌。

  最初的危险是喷发物落在房上,堆积起来压垮房顶,这是这次爆发带来的主要危害。这次爆发碰巧是在年度台风期,大雨浇在松散堆积的高温喷发物上。一种可怕的灾难开始了,在火山爆发后很久将一直困扰人们,它就是火山泥流。

  “想象一辆卡车在卸混凝土,火山泥流的浓度与混凝土相当,但总量却扩展到上百万立方米。所有喷发物一起移动,火山泥流就发生了。

  Bacalor城离Pinetubo火山40公里,火山爆发停止后,这个城市仍遭受着泥流的袭击。”8万人口中大多数已经迁至安置营。

  但约二成的人从未离开。泥流多次发生,但人们仍住在这里,他们极为坚决地留在这里。

  每年的雨季,火山泥流淹没并抬高地面。

  “有些人把房子抬高了两三次,有些人放弃了,有些人再第四次抬高房屋。我回到这里时,有一种挫败感,感到愤怒。因为火山泥流并不神秘,我们知道它如何形成和它能产生的危害。”

  Bacalor地区原有21个大的村庄,现在只剩下3个。看这个村子,1991年它被泥流淹没,94年和95年泥流又流过这里,形成了这个大河谷。这不仅使房屋毫无遮掩,而且会引发新的火山泥流。

  残缺的Pinetubo火山是沉寂的。厚厚的火山灰仍堆积在山坡上,仅20分钟的大雨就能引发泥流。在这里,一年18次台风很寻常。因此菲律宾的科学家们常年在山坡上监测天气。

  火山泥流已上千次地发生,都是台风时的暴雨所引发。人们修建大型堤防以防治泥流,筑堤防是为了疏导泥流,让它远离村庄。

  有些火山湖看上去没有秘密。这是西非喀麦隆的Nyos火山湖,看上去它并不像火山湖,湖下的火山只在500年前爆发过,但近来它被证实是最危险的火山湖。现在没有人住在山下的峡谷里,曾经繁荣的村庄和农场,只剩下几片废墟,还有一条依稀可辨的小路。

  1986年时James Nielen神父和现在一样是一名天主教传教士。他得翻好几座山才能到Nyos村,但他喜欢教区里的这个村子。

  “那里的民风很开放,我喜欢待在那里,因为那里总有舞蹈和欢乐。村民们很和善,就像吉普赛人那样”。

  他熟悉那些村民,尤其是教区学校的老师文森特一家。但在八月的一天,有消息说Nyos村发生了怪事。周六早晨,他决定亲自去看看。他和助手Hortensia一起,辛辛苦苦走了三个小时的山路。就快进入一向喧闹的Nyos村的时候,他们开始觉得不安。

  “当时真是太静了,没有鸟雀和牲畜的叫声,什么声音都没有。”

  在市场外围离他们最近的房屋里,他们发现了原因。

  “里面所有的人都死了;有些躺在屋外,也死了。神父说‘我们接着去教区办公室’。”

  他们从死寂的山谷里走过,所有地方的生命迹象都停止了,村民一动不动, 像诡异的静止造型。

  “我们走进一个院子,大人们都死了,有个人死前可能在熬一大锅玉米,她这样站在那里,好象还活着。”

  惨剧发生数日后,专家们去湖上想要揭开秘密。他们发现邪恶的秘密就在湖水里,湖水里有大量的危险气体,它们从湖底的火山岩里渗出来。气体取样器用了15分钟才到湖底,因为湖水深达200米。湖水深处的高压之下,积聚着大量的二氧化碳,像是一瓶苏打水里的气体。

  就在那个八月的夜晚,山崖的崩塌“碰掉了瓶塞”,气体猛烈地爆出火山湖。它比空气重,顺着山坡沉到谷底。Nyos村的村民没能幸免,二氧化碳充满他们的房屋,气体所到之处村民都窒息了。

  “这是一个小院外面的集体墓地,这与灾难发生一年前截然不同。那时侯山谷生机勃勃,我穿过山谷去湖畔 一年前乔治.克林参加了对喀麦隆所有湖泊的调查。那时Nyos湖的水样没有任何危险的迹象。

  “我们来到湖边,站在岸上取样。湖很美,天挺热的。我们在湖里游泳,却对湖底的秘密一无所知。从表面看这是个普通的湖,你看不出湖底正发生这什么。”

  毒气的爆炸使这个湖难以辨认,岸上没有植物,湖水变成亮橙色,气体终将再次从湖底的火山岩里渗出。

  “气体的积聚量一直在逐步增加,现在湖里的气体多了许多,超过1986年惨剧发生时的气体量,这是一个会爆炸的定时炸弹。引信已经被点燃,我们不知道引信有多长。”





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