高中英语人教版高三2 04

[05:51.90]Lesson 70            1 Reading comprehension
[06:03.96]Read the text fast to find answers to these questions.
[06:10.31]1 Where did the fire happen?
[06:15.64]2 What started the fire?
[06:20.40]WHAT CAUSED THE FIRE?
[06:24.97]A navy ship was in a port in Scotland tor repairs.
[06:31.81]It was important to carry out the work quickly,
[06:36.67]so an extra team of men were asked to work on the repairs one evening.
[06:43.23]They had to work inside the ship,cutting away old metal,fixing new metal plates,
[06:52.47]drilling holes,laying electrical and phone wires
[06:57.93]and fixing new pipes for water and steam.
[07:03.21]The team started work on a new section inside the ship near the front.
[07:10.05]One man was told to fix up an"air-line"
[07:15.02]to provide compressed air for the machines they were using.
[07:20.45]It took him some time to connect the long rubber pipe
[07:25.49]to the air supply pipe that ran round the port,
[07:30.46]but at last it was done and as a result work was able to progress much faster.
[07:38.71]After three hours,the men stopped for a meal break.
[07:44.56]When work continued,one man lit a cigarette as he was working,
[07:51.43]but,finding it had a strange taste,he put it out.
[07:57.60]Another man lit a cigarette but it burnt strangely and so he too put it out.
[08:06.06]Half an hour later,another man struck a match for a cigarette
[08:12.90]and this time the whole of the inside of the ship caught fire.
[08:19.38]As quickly as they could,the men ran to the steps and up into the open,
[08:26.46]many of them with their clothes on fire.
[08:30.51]Most of them were able to climb out in time.
[08:35.79]However four men were not quick enough to escape the flames.
[08:42.27]Their burnt bodies were found later.
[08:46.81]It did not take the firefighters long to put out the fire,
[08:53.19]and they at once started to look for causes of the fire.
[08:58.23]They were puzzled by several things.
[09:02.67]It appeared that a fierce fire had taken place inside the ship,
[09:09.75]but without damaging the walls.There had been fuel on the ship,
[09:17.01]but this did not appear to have cauded the fire,and little smoke was produced.
[09:23.77]The men who had been working on the repairs
[09:29.23]mentioned the curious way their cigarettes burned and tasted.
[09:33.91]The fire service began to wonder wheter a gas might have caused the fire.
[09:40.26]The question was,which one?
[09:44.99]It must have been a gas that could burn but that would not explode,
[09:50.76]a gas that did not smell strong,and a gas that did not kill people.
[09:57.00]The man who had fixed up the air-line was also questioned.
[10:03.06]He explained that he had tried to fix the air-line
[10:06.90]to the supply line that ran round the port
[10:13.43]but because the fittings did not match.
[10:18.19]So he had gone to the stores and had obtained a fixture
[10:23.75]that fitted both the tap on the suppy line and the end of the air-line.
[10:29.71]Once he had done this,he had been able to turn on the supply.
[10:34.88]They then knew that they had disovered the cause of the fire.
[10:40.44]The man had connected the air-line to a supply line of oxygen,not compressed air.
[10:48.49]Oxygen is widely used in ship repairs
[10:53.77]for cutting and joining metal plates or pipes.
[10:58.21]While the men had been working inside the ship,
[11:02.88]the air-line had been giving off oxygen.
[11:07.56]Once the oxygen content of the air had risen to 25%,it was ready to burn.
[11:15.42]The third person who lit a match started the fire.
[11:20.99]It was noticed that there were no signs or warnings on the supply lines that ran round the port.
[11:28.43]After the accident,all the lines and taps were clearly marked
[11:35.20]and new people joining the workforce were
[11:39.87]given a talk on safety before they started work.