Directions: After reading the passage below, fil in each blank with a proper word given in the box. Each word can be used only once. Nore that there is one more word than you need.

A. approached        B. claims             C. cover        D. crises          E. hardly        F left G. occurrence        H. reluctantly        I. spill            J. stricken        K. warnings

THE WILSONS RIVER broke its banks on the night of February 27th while Lismore, a town of around 30, 000 in New South Wales, was sleeping. Its residents slept through early-hours emergency     1     that “risk to life was approaching”. Within bours the town was submerged. Residents scrambled into their attics. Mothers carried children onto rooftops. An army of locals launched tin boats into the floods to save them. Four people died.

Eastern Australia has been     2     by what politicians call “once-in-1, 000-year” flooding. It has already had a rainy summer because of La Nia, a phenomenon which triggers downpours there. Brisbane, Queensland's capital, received almost 80% of its annual rainfall in less than a week in February, flooding 15, 000 homes. As the rain     3     northern New South Wales, it ripped up roads and drowned herds of cattle. Storms hit Sydney on March 8th, causing a dam to     4     over. Some 50, 000 people in the state have been forced to evacuate.

Scientists are careful when blaming floods on global warming because everything from rainfall to urban development contributes to them. Whatever the cause, extreme weather is now a regular     5     in Australia. In 2019 and 2020 vast lands of the country were torched in bushfires which destroyed more than 3, 000 homes and killed 33 people.

When disaster strikes, official aid is often slow to come. In 2019 the federal government set aside almost A$4bn ($2. 9bn) fora fund that would help it respond to     6     and relieve future ones. But it has spent     7     any of that money. It has now deployed the army and is dishing out cash to victims, but locals get angry that they were     8     for days without power or fuel as supplies of food and water shrank.

A debate now continues about how or even whether places like Lismore should rebuild. Analysts think the floods might trigger insurance     9     worth more than A$3bn. Premiums (保险费) are already so high in disaster-prone towns that many locals can no longer afford     10     . “If we are going to start thinking every time there's a natural disaster that we have to give up and leave because it's too hard, then where are we going to live?” asks Lismore's mayor, Steve Krieg. That is becoming a question for ever more Australians.