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  3. A massive earthquake struck Haiti just before 5 p.m. on Jan. 12, about 10 mi

A massive earthquake struck Haiti just before 5 p.m. on Jan. 12, about 10 mi

游客2023-11-14  72
问题     A massive earthquake struck Haiti just before 5 p.m. on Jan. 12, about 10 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, the country’s capital. The quake was the worst in the region in more than 200 years. Apreliminary assessment from Haiti’s government put the body count at 150,000 on Jan. 23.
    "I don’t think we will ever know what the death toll is from this earthquake," said Edmond Mulet, the newly appointed head of United Nations operations in Haiti. "People are burying bodies by themselves, many have been thrown into dumps outside the city and an untold number still lie under the rubble."
    The day after the quake, Haiti’s president, Rene Preval, called the destruction "unimaginable." The quake left the country in shambles, without electricity or phone service. Haiti’s shaky infrastructure before the quake meant aid efforts faced steep obstacles. With little food and water to be had, thousands of residents of the capital, Port-au-Prince, where the destruction was centered, fled the city to seek refuge with relatives in the countryside.
    Despite scattered looting, the city remained relatively calm, but there was little evidence that the central government was able to function. Ban Ki-Moon, the secretary-general of the United Nations, on Jan. 18 requested that another 3,500 peacekeepers be sent to Haiti to assist in delivering aid and prevent violence. The United States ordered the deployment of 5,000 troops to assist in the relief effort.
    The earthquake could be felt across the border in the Dominican Republic, on the eastern part of the island of Hispaniola. High-rise buildings in the capital, Santo Domingo, shook and sent people streaming down stairways into the streets, fearing that the tremor could intensify.
    Huge swaths of the capital, Port-au-Prince, lay in ruins, and thousands of people were feared dead in the rubble of government buildings, foreign aid offices and shantytowns. Schools, hospitals and a prison collapsed. Sixteen United Nations peac-ekeepers were killed and at least 140 United Nations workers were missing, including the chief of its mission, Hedi Annabi. The city’s archbishop, Msgr. Joseph Serge Miot, was found dead in the rubble of the Port-au-Prince cathedral.
    Survivors squatted in the streets, some hurt and bloody, many more without food and water, close to piles of covered corpses and rubble. Limbs protruded from disi- ntegrated concrete, muffled cries emanated from deep inside the wrecks of buildings — many of them poorly constructed in the first place. Ten days after the quake, the number of survivors pulled from the rubble stood at 121 as hopes of finding more dwindled. A large aftershock on the morning of Jan. 20, which had a magnitude of 6.1, was centered on Gressier, a village west of Port-au-Prince. As the most powerful tremor to hit Haiti since the initial earthquake on Jan. 12, it caused some additional damage to the ravaged capital and surrounding areas. [br] According to Paragraph 3, why do aid efforts face steep obstacles?
选项 A、Because few people survived the earthquake.
B、Because the destruction is huge.
C、Because the buildings are of poor quality.
D、Both B & C
答案 C
解析 细节题。题干已经指出信息出自第三段，根据“The day after the quake，Haiti’s president，Ren6 Pr6val，called the destruction“unimaginable．”The quake left the country in shambles，without electricity or phone service．Haiti’s shaky infrastructure before the quake meant aid efforts faced steep obstacles．”可以看出，灾难本身的巨大毁灭性、断水断电以及海地原建筑物质量不合格等原因使援救工作面临很大困难。
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