Unit 11 Emergency

Unit 11 Page 102 READING exercise 5 Miracle, UNDERGROUND It was 23 June, 2018. Twelve members of the Wild Boars football team and their coach stood in front of the entrance to the Tham Luang cave in Northern Thailand. The boys, aged between 11 and 16, had finished training for the day and they decided to explore the cave. They left their bikes outside and took their torches and some snacks inside with them. It would be more than two weeks before the group saw daylight again. The Tham Luang cave stretches 10 km into the mountain with a network of chambers, narrow passages and tunnels. Parts of the cave have been explored, but much of it hasn't. Inside there is no phone signal, so contact with the outside world is impossible. The first kilometre is open to the public, but only until June. In the rainy season from July to November it becomes extremely dangerous because the whole system quickly fills with water. And in June 2018 the rain came early. When the boys failed to come home that evening, their parents contacted the police. Finding the bikes outside the cave, the police soon realised where they were, but they also knew that rainwater had flooded the caves. The boys and their coach were trapped somewhere inside and were in great danger. At 4 am the next morning, Thai divers tried to start searching the cave, but it was soon clear that they did not have the equipment or experience they needed. News of the emergency soon spread. Within days experts from countries all over the world had arrived at the cave as they hoped to help rescue the group. For days an international team of divers searched deep into the caves but found no sign of the group. Then, at last, on the tenth day, two British divers arrived in a new chamber where they saw 13 figures sitting on a shelf of rock above the water. The boys and their coach were very thin and weak, but they were alive. The celebrations, though, were short. The divers knew the boys weren't out of danger yet and that the rescue would be extremely difficult. They had 13 young people with no diving experience to bring to safety through 4 km of dark narrow passages. Furthermore, heavy rain was predicted and water levels would soon be rising. If they weren't brought out soon, it would be impossible to save them. A team of experts worked night and day to plan the rescue. Each boy, dressed in a wetsuit and with a supply of oxygen, was taken underwater by a diver through the flooded chambers. The divers were guided by ropes to avoid losing their way and they kept checking the air bubbles to make sure the boys were breathing. In other parts of the cave, the boys lay on plastic stretchers which were pushed with great difficulty through the narrow spaces. It took three days to get everyone to safety and the last person was brought out just as the water levels in the cave started to rise quickly. It was a miracle – all 13 members of the Wild Boars had survived.

Page 104 PRONUNCIATION exercise 1 Hi, Jane! It's good to see you. What have you been up to? I've been travelling. I've been to so many places, I couldn't name them all! Wow, that's exciting. Did you go to Germany? Well ... that's one place I didn't get to. I went to France and Spain, though. Page 104 PRONUNCIATION exercise 3 Hi, Jane! It's good to see you. What have you been up to? I've been travelling. I've been to so many places, I couldn't name them all! Wow, that's exciting. Did you go to Germany? Well ... that's one place I didn't get to. I went to France and Spain, though. Page 105 LISTENING exercise 8 and 9 We asked you, our listeners, to send us your favourite fables – you know, stories with a moral, where we learn a lesson about life. We've received some great fables from you and now we're reading one every day as part of the podcast series. Today's suggestion is from Jeff in Derby. He has sent us the classic fable of Androcles and the Lion. So here it goes: Once upon a time in ancient Rome there was a slave called Androcles whose master was cruel and treated him badly. One day Androcles managed to escape and went to the forest to hide. While he was walking through the trees, he came across a lion lying on the ground under some trees. His first thought was to turn and run, but then he noticed that the lion was making strange noises and showed no interest in harming him. Androcles walked closer to the lion who held out his paw to him. The paw was purple and swollen. Androcles took it in his hand so as to see what the problem was and he discovered that there was a sharp thorn deep in the lion's paw. Very gently Androcles took hold of the thorn and pulled it out. The lion stood up and licked the hand of the man who had helped him. He then led Androcles to his cave. For days after, the lion looked after Androcles and brought him meat to eat. Some time later, both Androcles and the lion were captured and taken to the town. Androcles was returned to his master and the lion was kept in a cage for days without food in order to make him as hungry as possible. Androcles' master wanted to punish him for running away and decided to throw him to the lions. On the day of the public execution Androcles was led out into the arena. There were many people there to see the event, including the emperor himself. The gates were opened and the lion came running out into the arena towards Androcles. But instead of attacking the poor slave, the lion stopped and lay down on the ground in front of him – he had recognised his friend from the forest. The emperor was amazed by what he had seen and asked for Androcles to be brought to him. When the slave told him his story, the emperor decided that Androcles should be a free man. And he also decided that the lion should be free to return to his cave in the forest. So, there you are. And the moral of the story? I think it's that a true friend never forgets. What do you think of this story? Post your comments on our website ...

Page 106 READING exercise 2 EMERGENCY? What emergency? An emergency service should be exactly that: a service that you phone in an emergency. You might need to call an ambulance if you're in a car accident or the police if you see a crime happening. But some people phone the emergency services for such unimportant reasons that it's hard to believe these calls are real. Then again, there are some strange people out there, so perhaps it isn't really so surprising that the emergency services get some unusual calls. 1 One football fan was so angry that his team, Manchester United, had lost an extremely important match that he phoned the emergency services after the match and demanded to speak to the team's manager, Sir Alex Ferguson. 2 There was also a man who phoned the police after his son refused to get off his game console late at night. He said they'd had such a bad argument that he wanted them to come and put the boy to bed. 3 One woman couldn't find her glasses and thought the emergency services might help. She complained that she was trying to peel potatoes, but her eyesight was so bad that she couldn't see what she was doing. 4 Once, a man dialled 999 when he found that his snowman had gone missing. He had left his house for five hours to find that it had gone when he returned. He said he was really angry and wanted the police to check CCTV footage of the area. 5 The emergency services received a call from a woman to tell them that she had such a bad memory that she couldn't remember the password for her computer. She was so disappointed when they explained that they couldn't help her. 6 When one man's friend threw his shoes onto a supermarket roof as a joke, he phoned 999 and asked if the fire engine could come and help him get them down. He even offered to climb up to the roof himself if they could just bring a ladder. 7 One woman called up to complain that her husband was such a lazy man because he wouldn't bring her her dinner while she sat and watched TV. 8 Finally, one time a woman was so upset about a squirrel in her garden that didn't have any nuts that she phoned to say she wanted the emergency services to find someone to bring it some food. She was worried it would starve. These calls are amusing to read about, but they can have very serious consequences. 'It's such a waste of time! Every call takes about a minute,' said one man who works in the call centre for the emergency services. 'Perhaps that doesn't sound a very long time, but in that one minute, other people are calling who really have an emergency. And for them, a minute might be extremely important.' So let's get serious: please THINK before you call the emergency services. And, of course, remember that you should never phone them with information that's untrue – it's irresponsible and it's also illegal.

Page 108 Culture exercise 2 The Great ESCAPE After many tragedies, there are always stories of people who have shown an amazing ability to survive. Here are two stories which remind us that miracles can happen. On 5 August, 2010, the San Jose copper and gold mine in the Atacama Desert in Chile collapsed and 33 miners were trapped underground. The mine had a poor safety record and there were fears that the missing men wouldn't come out alive. A rescue team immediately began drilling into the ground where it was thought the men might be. On Day 17, when the drill was brought out of the ground, there was a note taped to it. In bright red letters it read: 'We are alive and well in the shelter, all 33 of us.' It was the news the whole country had been waiting for and the Chilean government promised to bring them out alive. For the next seven weeks, rescue teams from all over the world worked together to drill a hole big enough to bring out the men, who were waiting 700 metres below the ground. It was a long, difficult and dangerous job, but on 13 October, more than a billion people around the world watched live on TV as the first of the miners was finally brought above ground. Twenty-four hours later, the last miner, number 33, was reunited with his family and friends. In June 2013, a rescue diver was swimming through the wreck of the tugboat Jascon-4 when he got an enormous shock: a hand reached out and grabbed his leg. The ship had sunk two and a half days earlier and was now lying 30 metres below the surface of the water. The diver, who was part of a team looking for the bodies of the 13 crew members, hadn't expected to find anyone alive. But one man had managed to survive. Twenty-nine-year-old Harrison Okene from Nigeria was the ship's cook. When the ship got into trouble in rough seas and started turning over, Okene found an air pocket and put his head in it. As the ship sank towards the sea floor, he expected the pocket to fill with water, but it didn't. Despite the freezing water and having nothing to eat or drink, Okene had enough air to breathe. There was nothing he could do except wait. Sixty hours after the ship went down, Okene heard knocking and knew that rescue teams had entered the ship. He still wasn't safe, and a complicated plan was needed to bring him slowly to the surface. Unfortunately, none of the other crew members survived. But for one man, the tragedy had ended with a miracle.