Rene Compean was no stranger to Angeles National Forest. He’d hiked the park near his home in Southern California numerous times. But after taking a new path last April, he was lost.
As the day faded into dusk, his concern turned to fear. The terrain (地带) was remote and rough. With only a liter of water and less than ten percent battery remaining on his cell phone, Compean was unprepared for anything more than the two-hour journey he’d planned. Compean climbed to a spot, where he found only one bar of signal. “SOS. My phone is going to die. Pm lost,” he texted a friend, attaching a photo showing where he was. The shot showed his legs hanging over a steep rock.
Sixty miles away in Ventura County, Ben Kuo was working at home when he read a tweet from the Los Angeles County Safety Department. They had spent the previous night unsuccessfully looking for Compean, so they released the photo to the public, hoping someone might know the location.
Kuo works in the tech industry, and he has an unusual hobby —looking for where photos are taken. When he saw the blurry (模糊的) image, he pulled up a satellite map on his laptop. He narrowed his search to the surrounding area where Compean’s car was parked and spotted an area that looked like the terrain in the image. When he cross-referred the original photo with 3-D images of the area from Google Earth, the locations matched!
Soon, a search-and-rescue team helicopter was in the air, flying above Compean. After spending 27 hours alone in the wilderness, Compean cried, “I’m safe!” John Gibert, a member of the search-and-rescue team, says, “Compean’s story probably would have ended very differently had a total stranger with strong satellite skills and a sharp eye for detail not taken action.”
【小题1】What added to Compean’s fear?| A．Taking a completely new route. | B．Being unfamiliar with the park. |
| C．Being far away from destination. | D．Lacking preparations for emergency. |
| A．The released photo. | B．Kuo’s expertise in rescuing. |
| C．The successful image matching. | D．The rescue team’s efforts. |
| A．Lucky. | B．Expected. | C．Fruitless. | D．Smooth. |
| A．A Mountain Hiker | B．A Screen Saver |
| C．A Blurry Image | D．A Helicopter Rescue |
