LSAT 158 – Section 4 – Question 12

LSAT 158 - Section 4 - Question 12

May 2020

You need a full course to see this video. Enroll now and get started in less than a minute.

Request new explanation

Target time: 1:31

This is question data from the 7Sage LSAT Scorer. You can score your LSATs, track your results, and analyze your performance with pretty charts and vital statistics - all with a Free Account ← sign up in less than 10 seconds

Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT158 S4 Q12
+LR
Resolve reconcile or explain +RRE
Causal Reasoning +CausR
Net Effect +NetEff
A
8%
156
B
20%
155
C
64%
163
D
4%
157
E
4%
155
143
154
165
 +Harder 148.293 +SubsectionMedium

The only effective check on grass and brush fires is rain. If the level of rainfall is below normal for an extended period of time, then there are many more such fires. Yet grass and brush fires cause less financial damage overall during long periods of severe drought than during periods of relatively normal rainfall.

"Surprising" Phenomenon
Why do grass/brush fires cause less financial damage overall during long periods of lack of rain than during periods of normal rainfall, even though there are a lot more fires when rainfall is below average for long periods?

Objective
The correct answer should differentiate periods of no rain from periods of average rain in a way that could lead to less overall financial damage from grass/brush fires during periods of no rain.

A
Fire departments tend to receive less funding during periods of severe drought than during periods of normal rainfall.
This deepens the discrepancy. If fire departments get less money during severe droughts, we would expect even more fires or even more intense fires during droughts, which should lead to more financial damage.
B
Areas subject to grass and brush fires tend to be less densely populated than areas where there are few such fires.
This compares areas subject to fires to areas with few such fires. But we’re not trying to explain a discrepancy between areas. Even in areas where there are typically few fires, we’d still expect more financial damage from fires during droughts.
C
Unusually large, hard-to-control grass and brush fires typically occur only when there is a large amount of vegetation for them to consume.
It’s reasonable to think there’s less vegetation during droughts. So, (C) suggests there would be fewer large, hard-to-control grass fires during a drought than during average rainfall. This could be why there’s less financial damage from grass fires during long droughts.
D
Grass and brush fires that are not caused by human negligence or arson tend to be started by lightning.
We already know that there are more grass/brush fires during periods of long drought than during periods of average rainfall. The cause of these fires, whether human negligence or lightning, doesn’t suggest we’d see less financial damage from fires during a drought.
E
When vegetation is destroyed in a grass or brush fire, it tends to be replaced naturally by vegetation that is equally if not more flammable.
This fact would apply equally to both the long drought period and the average rainfall period. So we’d still expect fires during the long drought periods to cause more damage overall, since there are more fires during these periods.

Take PrepTest

Review Results

LSAT PrepTest 158 Explanations

Section 1 - Reading Comprehension

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

Get full LSAT course

Leave a Reply