Y

N

NG

massive

recently

construction

displayed

relatively

attends

type

strike

structure

participates K.excessive L.mild M. disturbing N.population O.presented Like most parents, geologist Brain Atwater worries about his daughter's safety. But these days, he has an unusual concern; The public school she (1_______) in Seattle has unreinforced brick walls, a (2_______) being easy to collapse during earthquakes. The same (3_______) of walls crushed hundreds of thousands of people during the 1976 Tangshan quake in China. A decade ago, Atwater would have paid little notice to schoolroom walls. But over the last several years, he and other scientists have found (4_______) signs that the Pacific Northwest has experienced giant quakes in the distant past and that the area may be headed for a destructive shock in the near future. At a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December, researchers discussed the (5_______) uncovered evidence of quake potential in the Pacific Northwest. While some remain unconvinced that huge earthquakes—with magnitudes of 8 or higher—do indeed (6_______) this region, a growing number consider such shocks a serious possibility. What's worrisome, they say, is that northwestern cities such as Portland, Seattle and Vancouver have not prepared for earthquakes of this magnitude, which could shake the region's (7_______) centers with enough force to make the recent San Francisco area damage seem (8_______) in comparison. "I think it's quite true to say that nothing has really been designed with one of these earthquakes in mind," says seismologist Paul Somerville of Woodward. At the meeting, Somerville and his colleagues (9_______) estimates of the degree of shaking. Portland and Seattle would suffer during such a (10_______) earthquake.