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  3. In some ways, the United States has made spectacular progress. Fires no longer destroy 18,000 buildings as they did in the Great

In some ways, the United States has made spectacular progress. Fires no longer destroy 18,000 buildings as they did in the Great

admin2011-02-25  78
问题     In some ways, the United States has made spectacular progress. Fires no longer destroy 18,000 buildings as they did in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, or kill half a town of 2,400 people, as they did the same night in Peshtigo, Wisconsin. Other than the Beverly Hill Supper Club fire in Kentucky in 1977, it has been four decades since more than 100 Americans died in a fire.
    But even with such successes, the United States still has one of the worst fire death rates in the world. Safety experts say the problem is neither money nor technology, but the indifference of a country that just will not take fires seriously enough.     American fire departments are some of the world’s fastest and best-equipped. They have to be. The United States has twice Japan’s population, and 40 times as many fires. It spends far less on preventing fires than on fighting them. And American fire-safety lessons are aimed almost entirely at children, who die in disproportionately large numbers in fires but who, contrary to popular myth, start very few of them.
    Experts say the fatal error is an attitude that fires are not really anyone’s fault. That is not so in other countries, where both public education and the law treat fires as either a personal failing or a crime. Japan has many wood houses; of the estimated 48 fires in world history, that burned more than 10,000 buildings, Japan has had 27. Penalties for causing a severe fire by negligence can be as high as life imprisonment.
    In the United States, most education dollars are spent in elementary schools. But the lessons are aimed at a too limited audience; just 9 percent of all fire deaths are caused by children playing with matches.
    The United States continues to rely more on technology than laws or social pressure. There are smoke detectors in 85 percent of all homes. Some local building codes now require home sprinklers. New heaters and irons shut themselves off if they are tipped.
To narrow the gap between the fire death rate in the United States and that in other countries, the author suggests______.
选项 A、developing new technology
B、counting more on laws and social pressure
C、placing a fire extinguisher in every family
D、reinforcing the safeness of household appliances
答案B
解析 count on…意为“依靠……”，题中的To narrow the gap between…and…意为“缩短……与……的距离”。本文作者在最后一段中表示了对美国仅仅依靠消防技术降低火灾死亡率的做法不满。认为要依法和社会舆论压力去减少火灾。
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