Most of us know to stay low to the floor if we’re caught in a fire, or head to the basement if a storm’s coming, or board up the

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问题     Most of us know to stay low to the floor if we’re caught in a fire, or head to the basement if a storm’s coming, or board up the windows in a hurricane. But because relatively few of us live along fault lines, the massive earthquake that hit Haiti was a reminder that we’re far less experienced in what to do when the ground below us shakes. If we’re in a house or building, for example, our first impulse might be to run outside—but, counterintuitive(与直觉相反的)as it might sound, experts warn against that since people are too often killed by falling or fallen objects as they try to escape.
    Of course, just as the best way to survive car crashes is to make safer cars, the best way to reduce the risk of being killed in an earthquake is to enact stronger building codes. But given how many of us travel in quake-prone regions today—including, tragically, the four students and two professors from Lynn University in Florida who perished in the Haiti quake—even folks who don’t reside in California should know how to survive an earthquake. But there are two different, and at times competing, schools of thought on the matter—both of which are considered valid but perhaps not always in the same situations.
    The most conventional and widely accepted practice by the disaster-response community is the "drop, cover and hold on" approach, which urges people to take cover beneath something like a heavy table to avoid falling objects. The newer method—and less researched—is known as the "triangle of life." It rec-ommends lying down in a fetal position not under but next to furniture; as roofs and walls collapse on the top of those sofas and desks, buffer(缓冲)spaces are created that protect people from being crushed. Over the past decade, a consensus has been building that "drop, cover and hold on" is a more appropriate method for developed countries like the U.S., where improved construction has greatly reduced the likelihood of structures collapsing inwards. The triangle of life is thought to be more suitable in developing nations like Haiti, where inferior building codes make finding a "survivable void" inside collapsed buildings more important than shielding yourself from falling pieces. "You have to think about the hazard level of the area you’re in," says Gary Patterson, a geologist and director of education and outreach at the Center for Earthquake Research & Information at the University of Memphis in Tennessee. "If you’re going to play the odds, drop and cover may be the best way to go, but a lot of emergency responders might say triangle of life because they’re the ones who see the fatalities in buildings that do collapse."
The new method differs from the conventional method in that the former believes that

选项 A、people don’t need to take cover
B、people don’t need heavy furniture
C、furniture collapses when roofs and walls fall
D、furniture can uphold the fallen roofs and walls

答案D

解析 第3段第1句介绍了传统方法,第2句和第3句介绍新方法,传统的方法建议人们躲在家具下面,而新方法则建议人们躲在家具旁边,最后一句中习us引出的原因从句揭示了为什么要躲在家具旁边:因为落下的屋顶和墙面可能会被家具顶住,形成“生命三角”,D是对这个原因的近义改写,为本题答案。
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