Today was Sunday, so I was in no hurry to get out of bed. As I rolled over and stretched, I heard my father shouted, “Oh, dear, fire!” There was unmistakable urgency in his voice. Upon hearing that, I got up and hurried downstairs. And my mother who was preparing breakfast also stopped cooking immediately. My father showed us a video shot by some witness, where we saw a fire inside a building. My mother stood beside him and shook her head.

“What a pity! Is it local?” my mother asked. As a policeman, my father had a keen observation ability. “It’s your hospital!” he watched the screen carefully and said in surprise.

It turned out that a building of the hospital where my mother worked as a head nurse was on fire. We found out later that an old wire first caused the building to catch fire and it began to spread. The camera captured the firefighters’ figures in black and orange uniform as they aimed endless streams of water at the fire.

“I have to get there,” said my mother, feeling anxious. My father and I offered to go with her. She threw on uniform and drove to the site.

Luckily, the fire didn’t spread to the building where my mother worked. After making sure that it was safe, we came to my mother’s office. My mother’s co-workers came to the office off and on as well. They were horrified at the sight of the next building but still thought about how to help.

Through a front window, I suddenly saw the rows of medical records in the next building, and I hurried to tell my mother. She felt really nervous and instantly consulted with her co-workers about how to cope. The situation was very urgent. They knew that if they waited until the firefighters who were busy evacuating (疏散) patients got here, those recordings might burn up. The fire broke out before the records, which were irreplaceable histories of their patients, could be entered into the computer.

They decided to rescue the records, and my father and I offered to help.

Finally, some firefighters arrived.

3 . 200,000 miles from Earth, the crew (机组成员) of the third manned mission (飞行任务) to the Moon faced an astronaut’s worst nightmare: an explosion on the spacecraft. It’s what happened in the Oscar-winning film Apollo 13, but it’s also a true story.

The lift-off of Apollo 13 took place on 11th April 1970. Two days into the mission, the three-man crew were in big trouble. They had been carrying out routine checks when there was a loud bang. Warning lights were starting to flash. Looking out into space, they could see a trail of gas — the spacecraft was leaking (漏) oxygen. They sent out a short message to the scientists back on Earth: “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” At first, they thought that a meteor (流星) had hit them, but they later found out that a short circuit (短路) had caused an oxygen container to explode. Whatever the cause, they knew there was no time to lose. Their electricity supply in the command module (指令舱) depended on that oxygen and pretty soon they would run out of both.

The only solution was to move into the lunar module — the section of the spacecraft that would have landed on the Moon. Now though, they were using it as a kind of lifeboat. With its own power supply, oxygen and water, the three men could survive in the lunar module and return to Earth. There was another problem though. In an enclosed space like a lunar module, the carbon dioxide the crew was breathing out was dangerous. The equipment to clear the air of carbon dioxide was only built for two people. Now it had to deal with three. Amazingly, the crew managed to build an adapter out of materials onboard to reduce the carbon dioxide to a safe level.

There was one final obstacle. The lunar module wasn’t strong enough to reenter Earth’s atmosphere so the crew had to go back into the damaged command module. To everyone’s relief, the crew of Apollo 13 arrived safely in the South Pacific Ocean on April 17th. Although the crew didn’t land on the Moon, NASA still considered the mission a success.

4 . On a cold November night, Layton was on his way home when he got an urgent call from his mother. “The mountain’s on fire.” she _______, “and many rental guests were up there.”

Layton’s family _______ a dozen rental cottages on Shields Mountain. At the thought of this, Layton _______ the gas on the dirt back road.

He _______ first to Layton’s rental cottages to make sure whether his guests were _______. Fortunately, all his guests were. At that point, he made up his mind to _______ his cottages to rescue tourists _______ other cottages nearby.

Over the next two hours, he travelled through the _______ mountain, knocking on doors and leading _______ people to safety. Knowing the mountain so well, he drove one after another family down the mountain on roads ________ in smoke in his pickup. When one family was ________ from the fire, Layton would take the pickup ________ up the mountain in search of another ________ person. He helped one elderly woman flee barefoot ________ hot road surface to reach his car and found a man unconscious in a burning cottage and ________ him to his car. Thankfully, he helped 14 people out of danger despite that he had ________ escaped the burns.

________ his brave and immediate action, the fire didn’t ________ a single life on Shields Mountain. And though his business were destroyed, Layton remains ________ “I wasn’t worried about the property ________, not when I saw those families trapped on the mountain.” he says, “I knew I was gonna help them.”