Word: torrent
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...maintain the federal bureaucracy as an ever-bearing hatchery, e.g., a burgeoning population (up 9% since 1952) and constant demands for more and more federal services. Last year the executive branch added 30,000 employees-the Post Office took on 12,611 new workers to handle the increasing torrent of mail; the Civil Aeronautics Administration had to cope with the swelling flow of air traffic; the Patent Office hired new employees to pare down the growing backlog of patent applications...
Health insurance, a boon to no million people in the U.S., is regarded by more and more doctors as a paper-spewing ogre. Reason: the torrent of technical information requested by insurance forms is cutting into doctors' valuable time for treating patients, leading directly to higher costs for medical care...
...bayou folk swam, clung, gasped and prayed for their lives. Those lucky enough to reach specks of dry land found only more terror: with them were alligators and water moccasins, tossed out of the torrent, snapping and striking in their fury (Mrs. Stephen Broussard lost three children to the tidal wave-and a fourth died of snakebite). In Cameron, a fisherman stumbled sobbing through the streets. His father, his pregnant wife and two children were gone. He was swept into the Calcasieu River-and was rescued to continue his grieving. On the courthouse steps sat a towheaded lad in hand...
...paratrooper on the line was Private Wayne Flugum, 23, a supply clerk from Leland. Iowa, making his ninth jump. Now he dangled spread-eagled in the rushing, punishing torrent of the plane's slipstream and propwash. Air Force Lieutenant Thomas Ansberry took the C-123 up from 1,600 to 3,000 ft., let down flaps, slowed his plane to about 70 knots. With two crewmen the copilot went aft to try to pull on the slick, virtually gripless static line (two-inch wide, ribbon-thin nylon webbing) against the dead weight of Paratrooper Flugum...
...static line. Finally he was at the hatch, his elbows almost in. A crewman seized each hand, a third grabbed at his fatigues. Flugum could not help himself, the sweat-slick hands of the rescuers could not hold the unbearable weight. Flugum tumbled down again in the roaring torrent...