It was rush hour on the morning of June 1 in the West Texas city of San Angelo. Heather Santellano, 36, was driving her white Mazda on Houston Harte Frontage Road with her nine-year-old daughter and ten-year-old son in the back. Suddenly, a red truck cut them off. Santellano turned the wheel hard to the right, sending the Mazda skidding off the road and down an embankment (路堤) that ended in a drop-off after about 50 feet. If the car didn't stop, it would fell onto the road some 20 feet below.

Then a bit of luck: As the car raced toward the edge, its undercarriage got stuck on the embankment shelf, stopping it cold.

The occupants, however, were far from safe. The car had come to rest on top of a retaining wall (护墙), hanging on the edge of disaster. One sudden move by anyone inside could send it over.

Jacob Rodriguez watched the scene from the truck-accessories company where he works. An experienced driver, he whispered a Navy word: “Ship, shipmates, self,” then he and four other men ran to the car. They jumped over onto the trunk (后备箱) to balance the weight as the terrified kids in the back seat watched.

Meanwhile, Julio Vasquez and his nephew, Marco Vasquez, were driving to their jobs at nearby Premier Auto-motive. Julio jumped out of the car to help while Marco went to the shop, grabbed a heavy-duty belt, and returned to the hanging car. He tied the Mazda to an F-350 truck that had been driven over by one of the other rescuers. With the car secured, the group carefully opened the back doors and helped the children out.

But when the children got out of the car, it lost its balance. And Santellano was still in the car. If nothing were not done immediately, the car would rolled down from the embankment and Santellano would be in danger.

Luckily, the men were still on the trunk.

The terrified children ran to their mother quickly as she got off the car.

3 . 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.

4 . An ordinary trip turned dramatic (激动人心的) for 18-year-old Justin Gavin, and extremely fortunate for a young family. Walking down the street, he saw something that made him_________. A small SUV drove past him, and it was _________in flames (火焰). His heart beat fast,_________when he saw children inside the car.

Drivers were honking (按喇叭) and getting out of their cars to get the_________of the woman driver. However, it quickly became_________that she could not stop the car.

The officials had already received several calls about a car on fire with a woman and children_________inside. However, without an officer on site, Gavin immediately went into action.

He ran after the car down the street to help the family_________from the burning car. “I’m yelling ‘Stop the car! Your car is on fire!” he said. Gavin finally_________the car when it came to a full stop. Without_________, he helped the mother out of the driver’s__________first. And then with the flames__________, he pulled three children out of the back seat. The flames quickly flooded the__________moments later.

Gavin said, “It’s kind of__________because I didn’t know whether I was able to get everyone out__________. Luckily, I did it.” Afterwards the mother credited the__________with saving her family.

“It’s not looking too good, darling, I think you’d better pack a few things and go to your mother’s place. And you’d better take Rosie and Monty with you.”

Putting down the phone, Sara sighed. Tomorrow was her husband Tony’s birthday. She had planned to cook him a nice meal and then surprise him with the new mountain bike she’d bought for him. If she went to her mother’s house, Tony wouldn’t get his present for days.

However, her mother’s house was the best place to be right now. Being on higher land, it would be safe from the floods. It had been raining heavily for almost two weeks and the river near Sara and Tony’s house was rising higher and higher all the time. Tony and others from the village had spent the last two days putting sandbags along the side of the river to stop it from overflowing. Now they feared that their hard work had been useless and soon the whole valley would be flooded.

Sara dressed baby James in warm clothes and collected the things she would need for him over the next few days. She put the lead on the dog and went in search of Monty, the cat. It took her a long time, but eventually she found him safe and warm under the covers on her bed. She placed him in his cat basket and took him into the kitchen where James and the dog, Rosie, were waiting.

Just as she was reaching for the car keys, Sarah heard a sound like the noise bath water makes when you pull out the plug. She looked at the backdoor, water was flowing in underneath. Turning around, she saw dirty brown water fountaining out of the drain and filling the sink. Realizing that they were trapped by the flood and it became impossible for her to drive out, quickly she put James into her backpack and pulled onto her back. Calling to Rosie, she picked up the cat basket and ran to the front of the house and out into the front garden, where the car was parked.

The water was already up to her knees, and Rosie was swimming beside her.

Sara, together with James, Rosie and Monty, was hungry and frightened on the roof of the house when a boat appeared in the distance.

65-year-old Mr. Fairfax had retired from teaching. He was very interested in adventure. This time he made an adventure on a sparsely (稀少地) populated land. In the cold winter, he tried a new place and forgot to bring his cell phone, the only time on the trip. He trekked (艰苦跋涉) more than half an mile with two dogs to a harvested wheat field.

With his dark staring eyes at the horizon in expectation of another rabbit, Mr. Fairfax stepped on the thin snow on a canal. Suddenly, it collapsed (坍塌) and dropped him four feet to the bottom.

Realizing that he was in trouble and was going to hurt himself, Mr. Fairfax was suddenly picking up a lot of speed. His left leg hit first, and he lay on his side to reach for his shotgun, unloaded it and used it as a crutch (拐杖). He spent an hour and a half climbing the canal but slipped and slid back down when he was partly up. This time, one of his feet got fixed between two rocks. Mr. Fairfax told himself that if he didn’t get himself out of that canal, he wasn’t going to have a very good night.

Mr. Fairfax walked his foot free and climbed more slowly and cautiously out of the canal. He immediately realized the difficulty of the task before him. The accident occurred about 2 p.m., and it was nearing 5 p.m. with the road far away as the sun was setting.

Mr. Fairfax focused on crawling to safety. Even with his gun supporting him, hopping was impractical. Instead, he sat down and pushed himself backward less than 40 inches at a time with his good leg. He was determined and sure that he must hold on. He was in exhaustion and had more frequent breaks. Temperatures dropped overnight, and his gloves and boots got wet. His hands and feet soon were completely numb.

Mr. Fairfax’s dogs had been playing in the field and eventually came up to him.

However, gleams (微光) of daylight remained — Mr. Fairfax saw the sixth car.

9 . As 17-year-old Norwood drove through St. Peters-burg, Florida, last February, the laughter and chatter from the four teenage girls inside her car quickly gave way to screams. As they approached a crossing, another car T-boned them, sending their car sailing into the yard of a nearby home, coming to a stop only when it crashed into a tree.

As smoke rose from the other car, a bystander shouted, “It’s about to blow up! Get out!” Shaken, but otherwise OK, she crawled (爬行) out through the window. Along with two of her friends, who’d also managed to free themselves, she ran for her life.

But halfway down the street, she realized that her best friend, Simmons, wasn’t with them. Norwood ran back to the car and found Simmons passed out in the back seat. She threw open the back door and pulled her friend out, avoiding the broken glass as best she could. She dragged Simmons a few feet to safety and laid her on the ground. “I checked her pulse.” Nothing.“I put my head against her chest.” No sign of life. “That’s when I started CPR (心肺复苏术).”

Had the accident happened a few weeks earlier, she might not have known what to do. But Norwood, who wants to pursue a career in medicine, had earned her CPR certificate just the day before. Kneeling on the lawn and looking down at her dying friend, Norwood knew she had precious little time to practice what she’d learned. She started pumping Simmons’s chest and breathing into her friend’s mouth in hopes of filling her lungs with the kiss of life. No response. And then, after the 30th try, Simmons began coughing and gasping for air. The CPR had worked! Soon, the ambulance arrived and rushed Simmons to the hospital, where she received treatment for a cut in her forehead. And then she heard how her best friend had saved her life. “I wasn’t shocked,” Simmons told CNN. “She will always help any way she can.”