It was a lifesaving task as thrilling as any in the months-long battle against the wildfires that have torn through the Australian bush. But instead of a race to save humans or animals, a specialized team of Australian firefighters was bent on saving invaluable plant life: hidden groves (树林) of the Wollemi pine, a prehistoric tree species.

Wollemi pines peaked in abundance 34 million to 65 million years ago, before a steady decline. Today, only 200 of the trees exist in their natural environment. The trees are so rare that they were thought to die out until 1994. That’s the year when David Noble, an officer with the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service, came across a grove of large trees he didn’t recognize.

Noble brought back a few branches and showed them to other biologists and botanists. A month later, Noble returned to the grove with some scientists. It was then that they realized what they had found: “a prehistoric tree species that has outlived the dinosaurs.” the American Scientist explains. So when Australia’s wildfires started burning toward Wollemi National Park in recent weeks, firefighters from the parks and wildlife service put a carefully planned operation into action.

Large air tankers dropped fire retardant (阻燃剂) around the pines. Firefighters set up an irrigation (灌溉) system around the trees to keep them wet. “If the fire did go through, we wanted it to be a cool burn as opposed to a hot burn to give them the best chance of survival,” Kean said. The fire did sweep through the groves where these trees have somehow survived for millions of years. For a few days, the smoke was so thick that it wasn’t clear whether the plan had worked. At last the smoke eased off. A few trees had been burned by the flames, and two died. But the efforts had paid off. “Finally,” Kean said, “we were able to get in there and see that, thank goodness, the trees were saved.”

I was sleeping in my room when my bed started shaking and a loud noise was heard. I woke up and my mom was screaming my name. Next moment I was running along with my younger sister, mom and dad. Before I ran out of the door, I realized my elder sister hadn’t come out yet. So I screamed her name at the top of my voice. My mom said she had gone to her class. Then the four of us, along with many others, were running on the staircase. We lived on the seventh floor, so I thought we would not be able to make it and the building would fall before we managed to reach even the fourth floor. My dad’s head was injured by something falling down. I did try to put my hand over his head. When we reached the sixth floor, the building split into two. We had no way to get down.

The next thing I remember is silence. There were around 30 people on the staircase and none could react. Five minutes later, someone opened the door of the sixth-floor flat. We all went in. We were wondering how would get down. From the balcony of the sixth-floor flat, I saw people standing on the ground floor. All eyes were stuck on us. I could see my elder sister crying.

Our first hope of surviving came when a worker climbed a rope to where we were. That was the first time we thought maybe we could get down. Half an hour passed and we were still trapped. Finally RSS people arrived with ropes. They got people down one by one. My biggest worry was how my dad would get down. Finally after two and a half hours, we all got down.

That day we saw the power of nature. It has taken more than two years to build the flats and it took just one and a half minutes to destroy the structure.

On Wednesday a powerful earthquake hit Amatrice that was at the epicenter(震中), which is the point in the earth’s surface directly above where the earthquake happens. The town’s clock tower was the only building still standing. Italy’s prime minister said the earthquake had killed at least 120 people, and warned that the number might increase. There were several villages that were affected in farther mountainous areas. The earthquake was also felt as far away as Rome, 100 miles from the epicenter.

Earthquakes can’t be predicted. There are warning systems that can save some lives, but only under certain conditions. Unlike a tomnado warning where radar can see it and issue a warning before it, an earthquake warning happens when the earth is already shaking. We don’t have a system that can predict when the earth is going to shake. Our warning system is based on the fact that the earth is already shaking. The warning depends on how far you are from the earthquake epicenter. If you’re at an earthquake epicenter, you’re going to get no warning. If you’re far away from the epicenter, we can give you some time to prepare.

Another condition is how close the sensor is to the epicenter. If the sensor is 10 miles away from the epicenter, it takes five seconds to get to that sensor. So, the more sensors we get, the more time we’ll get as well. If you get 10 seconds notice of an earthquake that’s happening, especially a big one, you can open up the lifts on the nearest floor. You can also stop all the things that are moving before the shaking gets there. If you’re 30 miles away, your warning could be 15 seconds. It is 15 seconds that can save your life.