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.
According to the passage, there has been only one fire with a death of more than 100 people ______________.
A、in the past 20 years
B、in the past 30 years
C、 in the past 40 years
D、 in the past 50 years
【正确答案】：C
【题目解析】：解析：从第一段此句it has been four decades since more than 100 Americans died in a fire. 说明是40年，decade是十年的意思，答案是C。
