Page 82 - Prime Time 1-5 Leaflet

1 How do you think Hurricane
Katrina affected New Orleans?
Listen and read to find out.
2 Read again and match the
subheadings (A-G) to the
paragraphs (1-6). There is one
extra heading. Compare with
your partner. Which words
helped you decide?
A Surrounded by water
B Gathering strength
C Collapsing buildings
D Moving on
E The birth of the storm
F Help at last
G An awful situation
3 Match the words in bold with
their meanings: broke , manage,
moved from the sea to land,
sending people to a place of safety,
old people , in danger, asking
anxiously, stealing , announced .
5 Imagine you lived
through Hurricane Katrina. Use
the phrases in Ex. 4 to narrate
your experience to the class.
Think!
4 Fill in: threat , recovery, beg,
declare, shelters, pump, tropical,
level, rise , struggle, lose, eye.
1 ................. storm; 2 ................. a state
of emergency; 3 the ................. of the
storm; 4 be under ................. from;
5 below sea ..............; 6 in temporary
.............; 7 waters .............; 8 .............
for help; 9 ................. to cope;
10 ................. water out; 11 ...............
their lives; 12 make a slow .................
strengthen, residents, declare, state of emergency, evacuate, eye
of the storm, below sea level, come ashore, levee, storm surge,
smash, looting, violence, emergency services, struggle to cope, the
military, desperate, army engineers, pump, slow recovery, rebuild
Check these words
On Tuesday, 23rd August, 2005, a tropical storm formed over the
Bahamas, about 560 km east of Miami, Florida. By 25th August, the storm
had strengthened and become Hurricane Katrina. Residents of the city of
New Orleans had no idea that within days, 80% of their city would be
underwater in one of the worst disasters in US history.
Hurricane Katrina was one of the most powerful storms that has ever hit
the Atlantic coast with winds of over 270 km per hour. As it became
stronger over the Gulf of Mexico, the mayor of New Orleans declared a
state of emergency and started evacuating the city. When the eye of the
storm missed the city by about 72 km, everyone thought the worst was
over, but they were very wrong.
New Orleans has always been under threat from flooding. With the
Mississippi River on two sides, Lake Pontchartrain to the north and most
of the city 150-300 m below sea level, a series of high walls, called
levees, protect it. As the hurricane came ashore, it brought an 800-
metre-high storm surge that rode the rivers up to New Orleans, and
smashed through the levees.
Over a million residents had already left the city, but tens of thousands,
mainly the elderly and the poor, were in temporary shelters. As the
waters rose, people were begging for help on roofs, and neighbourhoods
were suffering from looting and violence. Emergency services struggled
to cope.
Eventually, the military and the National Guard moved into the city and
began to get food and water to the desperate few that remained. After
43 days, army engineers pumped the last of the flood water out of the
city. Almost 1,500 people had lost their lives because of Hurricane
Katrina in New Orleans alone.
These days, New Orleans is making a slow recovery. The city has
improved the levees, the community is rebuilding itself, and everyone is
working hard to make sure that nothing like this will ever happen again.
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2
3
4
5
6
6 Find information
about a disaster that happened in
your/another country. Find out:
what kind of disaster it was, when/why
it happened, what happened, what the
situation is now. Compare it to the
disaster in New Orleans.
ICT
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