美国有线新闻 CNN 加州八月复合大火得到控制（在线收听）

In metric units, which of these prefixes means billion? Kilo, mega, giga, or tera.

在公制单位中，哪个前缀表示十亿？千、百万、十亿还是万亿？

These prefixes are in order of thousand, million, billion, and trillion with giga denoting billion.

上述前缀按顺序分别表示千、百万、十亿和万亿，其中giga表示十亿。

But when it comes to wildfires, the term giga is used a little differently. A gigafire denotes a value of 1 million as opposed to 1 billion. The term has been around for a few years now. And it's been applied to several massive blazes throughout history, including one burning in California right now.

但就野火而言，giga这个词的用法有点不同。Gigafire表示100万，而不是10亿。这个词已经应用数年。历史上也曾被用来形容几场大规模火灾，包括现在在加利福尼亚州燃烧的大火。

It's called the August Complex Fire. It's mostly contained, meaning it's mostly blocked from spreading further, but the damage has already been done. It's part of a highly active fire season across the United States.

这起火灾被称为“8月复合大火”。目前火势已基本得到控制，这意味着不会进一步蔓延，但火灾已造成严重损害。这是美国火灾高发季的一部分。

This isn't the worse in national history, at least not at this point. The National Interagency Fire Center says since 1983 there have been two years when wildfires burned more than 10 million acres. And 2020 hasn't seen that yet.

这场火灾并不是美国历史上最糟糕的火灾，至少目前不是。美国国家跨机构消防中心（简称NIFC）表示，自1983年以来，有两年的火灾季烧毁了超过1000万英亩土地。但2020年的火灾季还没有造成如此大的损失。

It's also possible that decades of fires before 1953 were much worse. But the NIFC says data from them isn't as reliable.

1953年前几十年的火灾造成的损失可能更加严重。但美国国家跨机构消防中心表示，相关数据不太可靠。

Lightening strikes are responsible for igniting many wildfires. So are people, through everything from campfires to fireworks to arson.

雷击引发了许多山火。还有人为因素，包括营火、烟火以及纵火。

For the more recent blazes, especially the ones in California, some experts and politicians have blamed a warming climate for higher temperatures and more severe droughts, which makes severe fires more likely. Some experts and politicians have blamed bad land management, not doing enough to remove dense forest vegetation which helps fires spread more easily.

对于最近发生的火灾，尤其是加利福尼亚州的火灾，一些专家和政界人士认为气候变暖导致气温升高和干旱加剧，这继而增加了火灾发生的可能性。一些专家和政界人士还将火灾归咎于土地管理不善，未采取足够的措施来清除密集的森林植被，这导致火势更容易蔓延。