2014届湖北省黄石市高考英语专项训练：阅读理解22（含答案）.docVIP

A powerful earthquake struck the northeastern coast of Japan at?2:46 p.m. local time on March 11th. Japans Meteorological Agency released its first tsunami warnings just three minutes later. The country has one of the best earthquake early warning systems in the world. More than?4,000 Seismic Intensity Meters provide information within two minutes of an earthquake happening. There are also concrete sea walls around much of the Japanese coastline. But these measures proved no match for the powerful earthquake and tsunami. Costas Synolakis is a tsunami expert in the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He says: Japan is one of those most well-prepared countries on earth in terms of tsunami warning. They had a warning. I think what went wrong is that they had not anticipated the size of this event. He says there are two reasons for this. First, scientists had not expected such a large earthquake. The?9.0 magnitude earthquake was the 4th most powerful earthquake ever recorded worldwide. It was also the worst ever to hit Japan. The tsunami waves reached as high as?13 meters in some areas. Second, Japans concrete sea walls were not built to handle such high waves. In Sendai(仙台), they were about three meters. At least in that area they were not expecting such a sizeable wave because they would have built a higher seawall. A tsunami wave can travel as fast as?800 kilometers per hour. To get to higher ground people would often have to travel for many kilometers. This can take more time than a fast traveling tsunami will permit. This is especially true in cases like Japan. The tsunami waves followed almost immediately. Experts say early warning systems will continue to be limited by these facts until earthquakes and tsunamis can be predicted. 17. What is the main idea of the first paragraph? A. A powerful earthquake hit Japan. B. Japan has the best earthquake early warning system. C. Japan can report an earthquake before it happens. D. Better equipm