Cloze 1

Historically, humans get serious about avoiding disasters only after one has just struck them. A1______ that logic, 2006 should have been a breakthrough year for rational behavior. With the memory of 9/11 still A2______ in their minds, Americans watched hurricane Katrina, the most expensive disaster in U.S. history, on live TV. Anyone who didn‘t know it before should have learned that bad things can happen. And they are made A3______ worse by our willful blindness to risk as much as our reluctance to work together before everything goes to hell.

Granted, some amount of delusion is probably part of the human condition. In A.D. 63, Pompeii was seriously damaged by an earthquake, and the locals immediately went to work A4______, in the same spot-until they were buried altogether by a volcano eruption 16 years later. But a A5______ of the past year in disaster history suggests that modern Americans are particularly bad at protecting themselves from guaranteed threats. We know more than we A6______ did about the dangers we face. But it turns out that in times of crisis, our greatest enemy is A7______ the storm, the quake or the surge itself. More often it is ourselves.

So what has happened in the year that A8______ the disaster on the Gulf Coast? In New Orleans, the Army Corps of Engineers has worked day and night to rebuild the flood walls. They have got the walls to where they were before Katrina, more or less. That‘s not A9______, we can now say with confidence. But it may be all that can be expected from one year of hustle.

Meanwhile, New Orleans officials have crafted a plan to use buses and trains to evacuate the sick and the disabled. The city estimates that 15,000 people will need a A10______ out. However, state officials have not yet determined where these people will be taken. The negotiation with neighboring communities are ongoing and difficult.

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