Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.

<passage>:
It has happened a hundred times in the long history of Earth—and, sooner or later, will happen again! Everyone—all the geologists, at any rate—had known about the Kiowa Fault for years. That was before there was anything very interesting to know about it. The first survey of Colorado traced its course north and south in the narrow valley of Kiowa Creek about twenty miles east all even the professionals were interested in knowing. There was never so much as a landslide to bring the Fault to the attention of the general public. It was still a matter of academic interest when in the late '40s geologists speculated on the relationship between the Kiowa Fault and the Conchas Fault farther south, in New Mexico, and which followed the Nor was there much in the papers a few years later when it was suggested that the Niobrara Fault (just inside and roughly parallel to the eastern border of Wyoming) was a northerly extension of the Kiowa. By the mid sixties it was definitely established that the three Faults were in fact a single line of fissure in the essential rock, stretching almost from the Canadian border well south of the New Mexico-Texas line. It is not really surprising that it took so long to figure out the connection. The population of the states affected was in places as low as five people per square mile! The land was so dry it seemed impossible that it could ever be used except for sheep-farming. concern about the level of the water table throughout the entire area. The even more ironic solution to the problem began in the summer of Service was keeping an anxious eye out for the fires it knew it could had other worries at the moment, and filed the report. this. Newspapers in the mountain states gave it a few inches on the front page anything is news in late August. And the geologists became interested. Seismologists were reporting unusual activity in the area, tremors too severe to be rock slides. Volcanic activity? Specifically, a dust volcano? Unusual, they knew, but right on the Kiowa Fault—could be. Labor Day crowds read the scientific conjectures with late summer lassitude. Sunday supplements ran four-color artists' conceptions of the possible volcano. "Only Active Volcano in U. S.?" demanded the headlines, and some papers even left off the question mark. It may seem odd that the simplest explanation was practically not of the Interior, wondered if the disturbance might not be a settling of the Kiowa Fault. His suggestion was mentioned on page nine or ten of the Monday newspapers (page 27 of the New York Times ). The idea plausible theory. Still, it was only a theory. It had to be proved. As the tremors grew bigger, along with the affected area, as several towns including Edison were shaken to pieces by incredible earthquakes, whole bus- and plane-loads of geologists set out for Colorado, without even waiting for their university and government department to approve budgets. They found, of course, that Schwartzberg had been perfectly correct. They found themselves on the scene of what was fast becoming the most violent and widespread earthquake North America—probably the chalk raked across a blackboard, the noise was deafening. The surfaces of the land east and west of the Fault seemed no longer to have any relation to each other. To the west, tortured rock reared into cliffs. East, where sharp reports and muffled wheezes told of continued buckling and dropping, the earth trembled downward. Atop the new cliffs, which seemed to grow by sudden inches from heaving rubble, dry earth fissured and trembled, sliding acres at a time to fall, smoking, normally impassive Schwartzberg in a nationwide broadcast from the scene of disaster. "No one here has ever seen anything like it." And the landslip was growing, north and south along the Fault. Cedarwood. Avondale, North Avondale and Boone had totally disappeared. Land west of the Fault was holding firm, though Denver had recorded several small tremors everywhere east of the Fault, to almost twenty miles away, the now-familiar lurch and steady fall had already sent the danger of rock slides from minor quakes. The geologists went home to wait. There wasn't much to wait for. The news got worse and worse. The Platte to add to the heaving chaos below. And the cliffs were higher every day as the land beneath them groaned downward in mile-square gulps. As the Fault moved north and south, new areas quivered into unwelcome down. They danced "like sand in a sieve" dry, they boiled into rubble. Telephone lines, railroad tracks, roads snapped and simply disappeared. Virtually all east-west land communication was suspended and the President declared a national emergency. By 23 September the Fault was active well into Wyoming on the north, and rapidly approaching the border of New Mexico to the south. Trinchera and Branson were totally evacuated, but even so the over-all death toll had risen above 1,000. Away to the east the situation was quiet but even more ominous. Tremendous fissures opened up perpendicular to the Fault, and a general subsidence of the land was noticeable well into Kansas and Nebraska. The western borders of these states, and soon of the Dakotas and Oklahoma as well, were slowly sinking. On the actual scene of the disaster (or the scenes the land shuddered downward in gasps and leaps. Springs burst to the just like that, on the afternoon of 4 October. "We must remain calm," floods, in the usual sense. The water moved too slowly, spread itself Nearly two million people were on the move, and the U. S. was faced with a gigantic wave of refugees. Rails, roads and air-lanes were eastward. All through October hollow-eyed motorists flocked into Tulsa, Topeka, Omaha, Sioux Falls and Fargo. St. Louis was made distributing center for emergency squads which flew everywhere with milk for babies and dog food for evacuating pets. Gasoline trucks boomed west to meet the now called it, they found their route blocked by eastbound cars on the On 21 October, at Lubbock, Texas, there was a noise variously described bell. It was simply the tortured rock of the substrata giving way. The second phase of the national disaster was beginning. wake the earth to the north "just seemed to collapse on itself like day. "Not tremors, exactly," said the captain of a fishing boat which else that evening. At approximately 8:30 p.m. the town shuddered, had swept over every town from Dothan, Alabama, to Bogalusa on the Louisiana-Mississippi border. radio message delivered from a hastily arranged all-station hookup. "We Then, as ominous creakings and groanings of the earth announced the by minute the advancing flood bit away miles of river bed, swelling north. Chicot, Jennie, Lake Village, Arkansas City, Snow Lake, Elaine, Helena and Memphis felt the tremors. The tormented city shuddered through the night. The earth continued its descent, eventually tipping during the night of panic Memphis residents were sure they were doomed. thirst of the soil temporarily broke the furious charge. Despite hopeful announcements that the wave was slowing, had virtually "We couldn't hear any shouts, of course, not that far away and with all The water had found its farthest westering. But still it poured north along the line of the original Fault. Irresistible fingers closed on Sterling, Colorado, on Sidney, Nebraska, on Hot Springs, South Dakota. The entire tier of states settled, from south to north, down to its on the outskirts of town. His brother Geoffrey brought along the ever have been called on to face, she added, "We sure wondered why behind, in the rush!" axis of world communication, a population explosion was touched off of be ranked with the first surge of pioneers which created the American

<question>:
What initially alerted people to the fault line and the onset of problems?

<options>:
A Geologists were already aware of its presence and had been watching it.
B They investigated what they thought was a forest fire, only to find it was sediment and dust.
C The land had become so dry it was a cause of concern.
D Newspapers had established the connections of the 3 faults.

<answer>:

B