Some of the homes that were destroyed and structurally compromised in

Veritas Prep Official Explanation

In this problem, notice the function of the phrase “Last year” to set up a time line. It is illogical that, all in the last year, the earliest settlers to the community built houses and those houses were subsequently destroyed in a fire.

Answer choices D and E, just by leading with that entire-sentence modifier “Last year,” begin to fail the logical time line test.

And answer choices C and D both use the ongoing tense “have been,” putting the building of the homes (by early settlers, nonetheless) after the fire that burned them down! That time line is even more nonsensical. Only answer choices A and B construct a logical time line using the phrasing:

The homes were ruined in the fire and the homes had been built by early settlers.

So what’s the difference? Verb tense conveys meaning but so do conjunctions (more to come on this in the Sentence Construction section!). Does it make sense to say that a home can be both destroyed and structurally compromised? If it is destroyed, then it is necessarily compromised, so the conjunction must be “or.” The correct answer choice is B.