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二套周日19:00首播 一套周日14:00 十套12:00,19:00重播

The Savage Rain  
  When the droplets in the clouds collide, they become too big and heavy, they fall to earth again as rain.

  Four thousand million years before man, the first rain fell, and still it falls, the same water endlessly rising as the invisible water vapour and falling again as rain, neither more or less, day after day since time began.

  This rain tumbling in the Amazon today might once have flowed through Imperial Rome, or slaked the thirst of a dinosaur.

  Rain, falling every day all over the planet. Each raindrop formed like a pearl around a speck of airborne dirt. A grain of sea salt. So that rain as it falls cleans the skies.

  Moisture sucked up by the Sun and falling again as rain. The essential cycle of life on Earth, but when thunderclouds burst, quite incredible quantities of water can fall. In less than hour of torrential rain a quiet river can turn into a flash flood, the weather's biggest killer.

  Yesterday Lynmouth was a peaceful holiday resort. Today it is a ruin.

  In August 1952 a flash flood swept away the heart of this Devon village. 3 Months worth of rain had fallen in a single day. As dusk fell a wall of water 40 feet high roared down through the village, hurling trees with the force of battering rams.

  On a sunny summer afternoon it's hard to imagine that Lynmouth could ever be threatened by its 2 picturesque rivers. In 1952, it was packed with visitors as it is today. There was almost nothing to prepare them for what was to come.

  I thought it was quite an eerie experience. It was a gun-powdery color of sky you know. It was something that made you feel you had to go home.

  Suddenly a wall of water came down, colossal amount of water, it made the ground tremble as the rocks thundered down the river.

  We rushed outside the shop, as we got outside, we were washed onto these railings with this wave of water, which was, came down waist deep.

  You could hear the rocks rolling all round and people calling out screaming you could hear their houses crashing you know.

  Repeated flashes of lightning lit up the scene and in a flash of lightning. You could see that there were different colored layers of vapour above the water, ranging from dark brown near the water up to a light yellow and beyond above and there was a strong smell, not an unpleasant smell one of wet earth rather than slimy mud, you know.

  I was then in the mainstream of the water. The telephone kiosk along side me went over as well. And it floated with the air still inside it so I grabbed hold of the telephone kiosk and went down the road with the telephone kiosk. And as I got near...back towards where my wife was hanging onto these railings, I was calling out to her.

  I saw a deep freeze floating by and I heard Norman calling me. And I put out my hand where the voice came from, and he grabbed it.

  She virtually saved my life really.

  More water flowed down through Lynmouth that night than normally flows down the Thames in 3 months. Above the tremendous din, you could even hear the screams of one family in particular, whole family went with the house.

  We'd look out the window and all of a sudden we'd see these shafts of lights, beams going up into the air and then sort of go murky and go out. It was a car that was being washed away and it was where the lights, the water made the contact for the lights, for a short while and the headlights came on and then eventually.

  34 People died that night. The youngest is a baby just 13 weeks old. Flash floods are so destructive because rain is so heavy. Floodwater flowing at 20 miles per hour is not 4 but 16 times more powerful than water flowing at 5 miles per hour. Flash floods kill 100's every year. Half of them in cars they think will save them. Just 2 ft of water can rip a car from the road and send it swirling away.

  Flash floods hit without warning. For thunderclouds can made huge quantities of rain in a terrifyingly short time. One hot July Saturday in 1976, these clouds grew to twice the height of normal clouds in less than 1 hour. Then they dropped 10 inches of rain on the Big Thompson River basin in Colorado. Downstream it wasn't even raining. Even in winter, the Big Thompson is only a trickle. But within its ice is locked a 20 year memory of a community and its sense of disbelief.

  The Sheriff had called me and said, "we have had reports that the Big Thompson River, they had some flooding up above." And that kind of surprised me because I told him we were just at the river and it's at its normal level, it's 6 inches deep and crystal clear. So I got my flashlight and walked over to the edge of the river and looked down at this little creek and all I saw was a torrent of water. It looked like the waves crashing in the ocean, they were just huge and there were these propane tanks and they were just like they were corks, flipping down the river. They would whistle, and sing and gurgle when they were going underneath the water, and all this was washing up and it was washing up against that part of the mountain there too and slamming back up like a big wave coming back.

  It wasn't water, it was like boiling lava. A car would appear in a bubble, come up to the surface with the lights on. You would see people waving and flashing lights and windows rolled down and screaming for help and then the car would disappear in the next roll of water.

  The Nicholson family lived here. Barbara and Howard and 5 young children. Howard took 10 year old Chris to help an elderly neighbour Mrs. Bailey.

  This is how forceful the water was. Her dress, there was almost nothing left of her dress and so I remember going up to her and trying to pull down what little was left of her dress and this is what, is just really weird because it's like. I turned and turned back and they were gone, they were gone.

  Their neighbours, the Grahams only realized something was wrong when they saw a bridge come crashing past their house on a wave of water. They hurried to get their 2 little girls to safety, away from the river.

  As we were going out the back door, another tremendous surge of water came by, it's the surge that carried away my wife and daughters, I barely made it to the house and I could no longer see any of my family. I saw some boulders the size of trucks rolling in the water end over end and there was no stopping them. I mean they just continued to roll. Pieces of house vehicles, cars and pick-ups, travel trailers washing by. Some of the cars still had their lights on. One or two of them I saw people in them trying to ride it out, but they were being tumbled about in these surges.

  As the Sun rose the following morning, the people of the canyon say what the rain had done. 418 Homes had been completely destroyed. 52 Businesses had been wiped out. 35 1/2 Million dollars worth of damage had been done.

  As the days went by 139 bodies were pulled from the wreckage. The flood had treated them cruelly. Many were so badly battered they were unrecognizable. Among the dead, Bob Graham's wife and his 2 years old daughter Lisa. And of his 9 years old daughter Theresa, no trace has ever been found.


狂暴的雨

  云中的小水滴不断地相互碰撞,逐渐变、变重,最后变成雨落到地面。

  早在人类出现前40亿年,地球就下了第一场雨。直到今天,雨仍在继续,而同样的水不断蒸发成看不见的水蒸气升入高空,再变成雨落下来。数量不多也不少,就这样日复一日地重复着。

  今天倾泻到亚马孙地区的雨水或许曾滋润过罗马帝国,或曾缓解过恐龙的干渴。

  雨水每天都降落在地球上,雨滴就是水裹着空中悬浮的尘埃,或海盐颗粒形成的珍珠,所以雨水在降落的同时

  也净化了天空。

  湿气被太阳蒸发到空中,然后又变成雨水落回地面,这就是地球生命最重要的循环。但当雷雨云爆发时,会向地面倾泻大量雨水,用不了一个小时骤雨就会把安静的河流变成狂暴的洪水。洪水是最可怕的灾害性天气。

  昨天林茅斯还是宁静的度假胜地,今天却变成了一片废墟。

  1952年8月,一场突发的洪水席卷了德文村的心脏地带,平时三个月的降雨量在一天内倾泻到了地面。黄昏时分,

  40英尺高的水墙咆哮着穿过村庄,像撞锤一样把树木连根拔起。

  在这阳光明媚的夏日午后,你很难想象林茅斯曾受到两条美丽平静的河流的袭击。1952年,林茅斯和今天一样,到处挤满了游客,他们对即将发生的灾难毫无准备。

  那是一次非常恐怖的经历,天空的颜色像黑火药一样,它让你觉得得赶快回家了。

  突然,一堵水墙冲了下来,水势非常凶猛。当岩石顺流而下时,大地在颤抖。

  我们冲出商店,到了商店外面。齐腰深的洪水立刻把我们冲到这些栏杆边。

  你能听到岩石在周围滚动,人们在喊叫,还有房屋倒塌的声音。

  天上闪电不停地闪着,照亮了地面。借着闪电的光亮,你能看到水面上方有不同颜色的水汽层,从水面附近的深棕色到最上面的浅黄色。在最上面,气味非常强烈,但并不难闻,不是淤泥的气味,而是潮湿土地的味道。

  我当时被卷到急流里,身边有个被洪水冲下来的电话亭,电话亭里还有空气,所以它浮在水面。我紧紧抓着电话亭顺流而下。当我接近我妻子所在的栏杆时,我开始大声喊她。我看见一个东西顺水漂过,我听见诺曼在喊我,我把手伸向传来声音的地方,他抓住了我的手。

  实际上,她救了我的命。

  那一晚经过林茅斯的洪水超过了泰晤士河平时3个月的流量。在巨大的嘈杂声中,我甚至能听到一家人的叫喊声,他们全家和房子一起被水冲走了。

  我们向窗外看,突然看见了一道道光直射向天空,接着光柱变暗,最后消失了,那是一辆被洪水卷走的小轿车。水一下子接通了车灯,先是前灯照了过来,然后。。。

  当晚有34人丧生,最小的是一个刚满13周的婴儿。暴雨产生的突发洪水破坏性极强,流速为每小时20英里的洪水,其威力比时速5英里的水流强16倍,而不是4倍。突发的洪水每年都要夺走100多条生命,其中有一半人是躲在自以为安全的汽车中。实际上,2英尺深的洪水就能把汽车冲离公路,卷入洪流。

  突发洪水的来临没有任何警告,因为雷雨云能在很短的时间里倾泻大量雨水。1976年7月一个炎热的星期六,不到一个小时的时间里,雷雨云的高度就达到了平时的2倍,然后向科罗拉多大汤普森河流域倾泻了10英寸的雨水。

  下游一点雨也没下。在冬天,大汤普森河也只是一股涓涓细流。但在冰冻的河面下,却封存着一段20年的记忆。

  警长在电话里告诉我:“有人报告说,大汤普森河上游发现了洪水”。这让我非常吃惊。因为,我告诉他我们就在河附近。河里的水位和平时一样,6英寸深,清澈透明。于是,我拿着手电来到了河边低头看那条小溪,它已经变成了奔腾的激流,就像大海的巨浪在翻腾。水很大,河里有一些装丙烷的罐子。它们就像木塞一样随着河水翻滚,

  当它们沉入水下时,会发出哨声、歌声和咯咯的笑声。这些罐子又被冲起来,撞到那边的山石上,再像巨浪一样猛地反弹回来。

  那不是水,像是沸腾的岩浆。亮着灯的汽车像水泡一样

  浮出水面。你能看到里面的人摇下车窗,挥着手臂,闪着车灯,尖声呼救,接着,又一个浪头打了过来,汽车消失了。

  尼科尔森一家住在这里,巴巴拉,霍华德,还有5个孩子。霍华德带着10岁的克里斯去帮助一位上了年纪的邻居

  贝利太太。

  洪水太厉害了,她身上的衣服几乎都被冲走了。记得我向她跑过去,想抓住她身上仅剩的一点衣服。

  真是不可思议,我回过头去,再转过头来,他们就消失了。

  当洪水卷着一座桥梁轰鸣着从他们门前经过时,尼科尔森的邻居,格雷厄姆一家才意识到情况危急,他们急忙带着两个小女儿向远离河水的安全地带跑去。

  我们刚冲出后门,又一波巨浪掀了过来,就是这个大浪卷走了我妻子和两个女儿。我挣扎着回到屋里,却再也看不到家里人了。我看到一些卡车大小的砾石在水中翻滚着,没有什么能挡住它们,就这样一直翻滚下去。许多汽车的碎片,活动房屋,小轿车卡车和旅行拖车被水冲了过来。有的车还亮着车灯,有1或2辆车里还有人。他们挣扎着要爬出来,但还是被大浪卷走了。

  第二天早晨太阳升起时,生活在峡谷里的人们讲述了暴雨所做的一切。418间房屋被彻底摧毁,52家工厂被夷为平地,损失达到了3550万美元。

  后来人们从废墟中一共找到了139具尸体。洪水对他们太残忍了,许多尸体被洪水损坏得无法辨认。在这些尸体里

  有鲍勃·格雷厄姆的妻子,他2岁的小女儿利萨,至于9岁的大女儿特里萨,仍下落不明。





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