Fires in American
In some ways, the United States has made great progress. Fires no longer destroy 18,000 buildings as they did in the great Chicago fire of 1870, or kill half a town of 2400 people as they did the same night in Peshtigo, Wisconsin. Except 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 not-enough-attention to the fires.
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 man-made fires. It spends far less on preventing fires than on fighting them. American fire-safety lessons are aimed almost entirely at children, who die in large numbers in fires but who start very few of those fires.
Experts say the fatal(致命的) error is an attitude than 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 12000 buildings, japan has had punishment for negligence(疏忽) can be as high as life imprisonment(监禁).
In the United States, most education dollars are spent in elementary schools. But the lessons are aimed at too limited an audience; just 9 percent of all fire deaths are caused by children playing with matches. It is a pity that the United States continues to rely more on technology than laws or social pressure. There are smoke detectors（探测器）in 85 percent of all homes.
The reason why so many Americans died in fires is that______________
A、they took no interest in new technology
B、they did not pay much attention to preventing fires
C、they did not give public education about fires
D、they did not spend enough money on fire equipment
【正确答案】：B
【题目解析】：解析：从第二段此句Safety experts say the problem is neither money nor technology, but the not-enough-attention to the fires.说明火灾死亡人数那么高不是钱的事不是技术的事，而是对大火关注度不够的原因，答案是B
