Surely it's D) Simile. It is a figure of speech that is used too compare two states or smth else. You can identify it by the words "like" and "as".
The phrase means that there's a lot of dirt around us and it is a common thing to see that.
14. c. vingo had looked at the snapshot a great deal
15. c. entertain readers with a heartwarming story
16. c. suspenseful
I believe it's B! Participle phrases typically take the sentence and add some sort of modifier. An example of this that I've found is "Removing his pants, Ron jumped into the water to save the child." Another one is "The art museum, destroyed by a hurricane, was never rebuilt." The modifier can be removed from the sentence and it would still make sense.
