3 . It was late, about 10:15 p.m. Janice Esposito got off the train at Bellport, New York, went to her car and started driving home. She was so familiar with the route that she almost drove automatically: turned left to the Station Road, then another left onto Montauk Highway, and then—bam! When Esposito’s car had just crossed the railroad tracks, it hit another vehicle and was pushed back onto the tracks. Injured but mostly shocked by the crash and by the airbags that popped up, she was stuck in the vehicle.

As it happened, Pete DiPinto was just about to go to sleep when he heard a sharp noise and saw the accident not far outside his bedroom window. As a volunteer firefighter and retired teacher, DiPinto, who was 65，fetched a flashlight and rushed out without hesitation. “Any firefighter would have done what I did,” he said. “We’re always on duty.”

At first, he spotted the other car in the accident. After making sure that the driver was all right, DiPinto looked around and discovered Esposito’s car straddling the railway tracks. And then he heard the bell ring, which signaled a train’s arrival.

DiPinto rushed to Esposito’s car and broke the window on the driver’s side. Esposito looked up at him, with her eyes glazing over. “I don’t know where I am,” she said.

“You’re on the railroad tracks，”DiPinto yelled. “I have to get you off right now! The train was running toward them at a speed of some 105 kilometers per hour. The driver’s door fail to be opened due to the collision(碰撞), so DiPinto quickly run to the other side and was able to open the door. He put the airbags aside, seized her arms, pulled her toward him across the passenger seat until finally got her out and walked her to safety as swiftly as possible. Several seconds later, the train crashed into the vehicle. “It was like a Hollywood movie,” DiPinto told reporters the next day.

“Last night,” said Gregory Miglino Jr., Chief of the Department in South Country Ambulance, “the hero arrived in pajamas(睡衣裤), not in a fire truck.”

5 . Norwood, a junior at St. Petersburg^ Lakewood High School, participated in the school’s Athletic Lifestyle Management Academy. The program prepares students for various careers in health science with two components. The first one is a hands-on skills component where the students have to demonstrate that they are expert in the skills of adult, child and infant CPR （心 肺复苏术），how to help somebody who's choking, as well as how to use an AED （自动体外除 颤仪）.And the other is a written test component, showing that they master that knowledge. Norwood took a great interest in the programme, which was in line with her initial career pursuit in the future.

On the first day of the programme, her instructor Miller did vital signs and students learned how to take blood pressure, check pulse, and apply CPR. Norwood watched closely and performed the hand-on skills well.

Norwood and Simmons shared a long friendship. They had been friends since the seventh grade and since then they had built an unbreakable bond. The following day after school, the 16- year-old girl Norwood was driving three friends home in St. Petersburg, Florida, when another driver slammed into her from her left and sent her car rushing forward in an uncontrollable way.

“We crashed in someone's yard and I hit the tree," Norwood said. The impact jammed shut the driver's side door, so Norwood climbed out of the front window. Two of her friends managed to get out of the car unharmed, but the collision caused her 16-year-old friend Simmons to hit her head on the backseat window.

When Norwood turned around, she didn't see Simmons running with them so she had to run back to the car as fast as she could. Simmons was just sitting there unresponsive. Apparently, she passed out owing to the huge impact force. The unexpected crash left the girls in panic. A lot of people started to gather around to see what was happening. The crowd watched in astonishment, open-mouthed. Someone advised to make an emergency call immediately.

Paragraph 1 ： And that was when the training Norwood had just learned kicked in.

Paragraph 2 ： When Miller and her students learned about the news, they were at a loss of words and so proud.

6 . I was recently involved in a bad traffic accident. I was knocked unconscious by the impact so I don’t __ anything about the accident. My first memory is being given oxygen as the doctors and nurses tried to ____ me back to life.

As I lay in the emergency room, I found myself ____ my life and thanking God that I was still __. The good news is that nobody else was __.

Since that day, the physical recovery has been __ but not as tough as the emotional recovery. I've learned a lot about myself and about what really ____ in this world. Things that are really important are not“things”. I’m not invincible(无敌的)and I cannot ____ everything that happens in my life. I need to be better at ____ the things that come into my way that I didn’t plan for. As someone who was always in a ____，it taught me to slow down a little. I have learned to live each day honestly and ____.

___ I continue to heal physically and emotionally，I have a different opinion on ____ . When tragedy strikes，you can either let it ____ your spirit，or use it as an opportunity to grow. I have chosen to ____ from it.

Rescue in a Bottle

Curtis Whitson had rafted (v.乘筏) down the Arroyo Seco, a river in central California, several times before.

This year, Curtis Whitson knew the water-fall was coming. He figured he would get out of his raft into the shallow water, get down the rocks along ropes on either side of the falls, and continue on his way, as he had on a previous trip.

But this year was different. Heavy snow and spring rains had turned the usually manageable falls into something fierce. And this year, instead of his friends, Whitson’s companions were his girlfriend, Krystal Ramirez, and his 13-year-old son, Hunter. As the three of them approached the falls late in the afternoon of the third day of their camping trip, Whitson could tell from the increasing roar of water in the narrowing canyon(峡谷) that they were in serious trouble. There was no way they’d be able to get down the rocks as planned.

“The water was just roaring through there with tremendous force,” recalls Whitson, 45.

They had no smart phone service, and they hadn’t seen a single person in the past three days. And Whitson knew that they’d be sharing the ground there with rattlesnakes and mountain lions.

As he was thinking what to do, Whitson hit on a bit of luck---he heard voices coming from the other side of the falls. He yelled, but the sound of the rushing water drowned him out.

“We have to get these people a message,” Whitson thought.

He grabbed a stick and pulled out his pocketknife to carve “Help” in it. Then he tied a rope to it so the people would know it wasn’t just any stick. He tried throwing it over the falls, but it floated away in the wrong direction.

“We’ve got to do something!” Whitson yelled to his son. “Have we got anything else?”

Then he spotted his water bottle. Whitson grabbed it and carved “Help!”on it. Ramirez also reminded him that he had a pen and paper in his backpack.

Whitson knew it was a slim hope. But he wrote “6-15 19:00 We are stuck here@ the waterfall. Get help please” and pushed the note into the bottle. This time, his throw over the waterfall was perfect.

“All right, that’s all we can do,” Whitson told Hunter.

It took 30 minutes to get back upstream to the beach where they’d had lunch.

The next morning, the helicopter returned.

On July 8, 2017, eight members of a family in total, were enjoying an evening together at the beach in Panhandle, Florida. As the sun sank lower on the horizon, the two boys Noah, 11, and Stephen, 8 swam into the waves without the grown-ups noticing. Soon they realized that the ocean had pulled them into the sea. After trying and failing to swim back, they started waving and screaming for help. But the lifeguards had been off duty for the evening.

The boys had been struggling for several minutes when Jacky and Tabatha, a couple from Georgia, heard them. They dived into the water and soon reached the two brothers. But after a few minutes, they were all trapped in a rip current (离岸流) — a powerful one that could sweep even the strongest swimmer out to sea! By then, some teenagers had heard the cry. One of the teens rushed into the water, grabbed Jacky, and pulled him back to shore. Meanwhile, Tabatha could feel herself being pulled farther out. She was already exhausted and beginning to feel desperate as she was trying to save both boys alone.

Onshore, Jacky was terrified. A man stopped. ''What’s wrong?'' asked Shaun, who was heading back to his car. ''My wife is drowning!'' Brittany said. Shaun immediately strode (大步跨) into the water. But several minutes later, a gaping 15 feet still lay between him and Tabatha and the boys. He knew that if he continued, he'd become another victim. He turned around to seek help.

It was about that time that Roberta, the boys' mother, returned from the bathroom and looked around for her children. She was shocked to spot them floating much farther out than they were allowed to go. She fought the waves to get to her screaming sons and the stranger who was trying to save them, but she quickly discovered it was nearly impossible to make headway in any direction. Looking around, Roberta sighed with relief to see some more people coming to help.

When they tried in vain to rescue the brothers and Tabatha, a risky idea came to them.

By then, more swimmers had also noticed the group in trouble and rushed to join the human chain.