They’d just finished lunch at a café in Orange County—Chuck Rees, his wife, Laurie, and her mother, Ann Marie Effert. Then Rees, 51, spotted smoke rising from a hill a few blocks away. “Let’s get up there!” he cried.
Keeping the dark plumes（李树） in sight, the three drove through winding, unfamiliar streets and eventually came upon a white two-story hou with black smoke from the back.
Rees pulled his car alongside a couple standing on the pavement in front of the hou. “Anybody in there?” he asked them.
“I knocked, but nobody answered,” the man said. “We’ve called 911.”
Rees threw his car into park. “Chuck, don’t,” Laurie said, although she knew he wouldn’t listen. He’d once dropped the receiver of a pay phone in the middle of a conversation with her to run after a man who stole a wallet from an old woman.
He pointed to the flames rising up the back of the hou. The woman looked at him, frightened.
“Laurie, I’ve got to,” he said, and jumped out of the car.
Rees ran up the driveway along the right side of the hou, hoping to find the source of the fire and put it out with a garden ho（软管）. A locked gate blocked his way into the backyard. He considered climbing over it, but a large Labrador retriever mix（拉布拉多混血犬） appeared on the other side and bared its teeth at him. That means somebody lives here, Rees thought.
He rushed to the front door and tried the handle; it was locked. He knocked on the door; no one answered. Then he moved along the left side of the hou, past what looked like a small addition. He grabbed onto a chain-link fence and pulled it back far enough for him to squeeze through. Another large Lab mix stood waiting for him; this one was wagging(摇摆) its tail.
As he scanned the back of the hou for a hosignature（软管）, Rees noticed a small steel door in the addition. He knocked on it with his fist. “Is anybody in there?” he shouted. “Your hou is on fire!” No one answered. He knocked on the door again.
Soon he heard a woman’s faint voice from the other side of the door. “Hello?” she said.
Rees pushed the door open a couple of inches. He stuck his hand through the gap and discovered that the handle was stuck to something, preventing it from opening all the way. “Ma’am, your hou is on fire,” he repeated. “You need to get out.”
He spotted a broad-bodied elderly woman with long white hair through the crack in the doorway. Barefooted, she looked confud, as if he had awakened her.
“There’s a fire,” Rees told her again. “I need to get you out of here.”
“I don’t believe you,” the woman responded.
学盘发
“I’ll show you,” Rees said.
He grabbed her hand, led her into the backyard, and pointed to the flames rising up the back of the hou. The woman looked at him, frightened.
Rees was afraid too. He knew she wouldn’t be able to climb a wall or squeeze through a f
ence the way he had. They’d need to find another way out.
He guided the woman and dog back into the addition and through a doorway connecting it to the hou. The fire spread to the kitchen and dining area to their left. Smoke raced along the ceiling.
He glanced back inside the addition and saw a door he hadn’t noticed before. He opened it, and there stood Laurie and another neighbor. “Take her and the dog,” Rees told them. The pair took the woman and her pet to safety. (The other dog was rescued later.)
Rees rushed back into the living room to check for others. The smoke had descended（下降） nearly to the floor, and he could hear boards burning upstairs. The heat was almost unbearable. He moved through the downstairs rooms, coughing and yelling up the stairwell to anyone who might be there. After one last look around, Rees fled.
A fire crew arrived, and Rees quickly told them the situation. Moments later, flames swallowed the hou.
Exhausted and covered in sootinformationization（煤烟）, Rees climbed back into his car and drove his wife and mother-in-law home to Tustin before anyone got his name.
conductor是什么意思That night, the local news reported that an unknown man had rescued an elderly woman with dementia（痴呆） from her burning hou. Effert proudly called media to identify her son-in-law as the hero.
慧眼识英雄
But he didn’t do it for fame, Rees says. “It was something that needed to be done.”¦
1. Which of the is the best summary of the passage?
A. The big fire broke out in a white two-story hou.
B. The media highly praid the man Rees.one way
C. Rees with his wife rescued an old woman.
account numberD. Rees rescued an old woman from a big fire asking nothing in return.
2013河北中考语文
2. The underlined words “faint’’ in the passage most probably refer to____________.A. light B. weak C. strong D. angryeleven
