Direction: In the following questions, you have brief passages with 5/10 questions following each passage. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
Passage
The term ‘tsunami’ is a Japanese word meaning harbour wave. It is a natural phenomenon consisting of a series of large waves generated when water in a lake or the sea is rapidly displaced in a massive scale. Earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions -all have the potential to generate a tsunami. Early morning on December 26, 2004, a massive earthquake of 9 on the Richter scale off the coast of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean triggered a series of lethal tsunamis. They struck the shores of Indian Ocean nations like Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, India, Bangladesh and the Maldives and created unprecedented devastation. Even the far flung countries like Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania in eastern Africa were not spared. This is the deadliest tsunami in recorded history and is considered the worst natural calamity the earth has ever witnessed. The tsunami fury left trails of death and destruction all around, killing nearly 3,00,000 people and leaving millions homeless and missing. Many people became maimed for life. The death toll was more than 1,70,000 in Indonesia alone, 38,000 in Sri Lanka and nearly 5,000 in Thailand. Most of the dead were locals, but hundreds of vacationing foreigners also perished, mostly in Phuket in Thailand. In India about 19,000 people lost their lives. In some places the waves were as high as fifty to sixty feet. In many places villages were wiped out, boats and vehicles thrown up on trees. An Indian Air Force base in Car Nicobar was completely devastated and 100 airmen were killed. Many parts of South Car Nicobar Island went fully under water. Many coastal areas of Andhra Pradesh and Kerala also suffered a lot. The Tsunami underlines the need for having a global tsunami monitoring system which at present is not there. In countries like Japan, some measures have been taken to reduce the damage caused in the shores by building high tsunami walls in front of coastal areas. While science has conquered nature in many ways, the Tsunami of 2004 proves that nature is supreme in this unequal battle.
SOME IMPORTANT WORDS
(1) triggered (V.) : to make something happen suddenly
(2) lethal (Adj.) : deadly ; fatal
(3) unprecedented (Adj.) : that has never happened, been done/been known before
(4) devastation (N.) : great destruction/damage, especially over a wide area
(5) calamity (N.) : an event that causes great damage to people’s lives, property, etc.
(6) trails (N.) : signs
(7) maimed (V.) : to injure somebody seriously, causing permanent damage to their body
(8) wiped out (Phr.V.) : destroyed completely
(9) underlines (V.) : to emphasize ; stress