The moment the ground stops shaking after an earthquake, some people may wonder whether their pets — or wild animals — had known the disaster was coming.

To get to the bottom of this question, Heiko Woith, a scientist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences, and his colleagues reviewed more than 700 published reports of unusual behavior among 130 species, including insects, birds, fish, cats, dogs and cattle from 160 earthquakes. The records included all kinds of behavior, including a tiger that reportedly got depressed before an earthquake.

The researchers found that 90 percent of all reported cases happened within 62 miles of the epicenter (震中) and within 60 days of an earthquake. Then, they examined when and where foreshocks had happened in the region and concluded that it was hard to say these animals could predict the earthquake itself. Rather, they were just responding to foreshocks.

“The space-time patterns of animal precursors (预兆) and foreshocks are strikingly similar,” Woith said. “From this, we concluded that the abnormal animal behavior might simply be related to foreshocks. These animals are just responding to foreshocks rather than predicting the earthquake. They don’t have super power.”

Despite the vast number of incidents, good information was little and scientific evidence is lacking. “A major surprise for us was that the large majority of published claims were built on poor observational data, which did not stand as statistical scientific proof,” Woith said.

To better study whether animals can predict earthquakes, Woith and his colleagues suggested that researchers ask a number of yes-or-no questions in any upcoming experiments, including “Is the experimental setup and monitoring procedure clearly described and reproducible?” and “Is it proven that the animal behavior is really unusual?”

Meanwhile, humans are working on technologies that can detect earthquakes seconds before they hit. Hopefully, we will have such devices to warn people that an earthquake is coming.

Cal Fire captain Shawn Raley barked evacuation (疏散) orders over the radio for the neighbourhood of Sunset Terrace. The sky was red and the wind screamed, shaking the leaves off the trees. New fires lit in bushes and on roofs. A 24-year veteran of wildland fires, Raley had seen nearly everything, including swirling eddies (旋涡) of air called fire whirls. But he hadn’t seen anything like this.

At around 7:15 p. m., he drove toward areas in the wooded hills. He figured that residents would need help escaping. His headlights barely pierced the smoke, but he could see three bulldozers (推土机) inch past him on two-lane Buenaventura Boulevard. Don Andrews, who was unaware of the dangers he was about to face, drove one; contractors Terry Cummings and Jimmie Jones drove the other two. They were under electrical line, which were swaying in the wind, and Raley shouted at the men to move away.

In the driveway of a house, Raley spotted a Tesla with someone in the driver’s seat. Dr. Thiruvoipati Nanda Kumar, 62, had raced eight kilometres home from Vibra Hospital of Northern California. His wife, Yasoda, 58, and daughter, Sushma, 29, hadn’t received an evacuation alert, and when the power cut out, their garage door wouldn’t open, locking their car inside.

“Go back!” Raley shouted at Kumar, sounding his siren.

“My wife and daughter are there. Can they come in?” Kumar said, pointing to Raley’s vehicle. He figured they’d be safest with the captain.

“Come in my truck?” Raley asked. “Yes.”

The women jumped into the back seat, coughing. Nearby, flames that climbed 30 metres burned their neighbours’ homes. Soon theirs would fall, as well.

“I’ll lead you out,” Raley yelled to Kumar. “Take your car.”

Debris (碎片) attacked the truck, cracking Raley’s windshield and breaking the other windows as the wind blew the vehicle off the road. The captain threw himself across the passenger seat, protecting his face as the fire passed over them. Yasoda and Sushma screamed.

“Are you okay?” Raley shouted, though he knew the answer. He was embarrassed. He’d told this trapped family that he would get them out safely. Now they were covered in glass and bleeding. Behind them, the trunk of Kumar’s Tesla was a flame.

All short-haul flights out of Heathrow were cancelled while Eurostar passengers in London queued around the block. Gatwick Airport is shut and will not reopen until Tuesday. The government has apologized for spoiling so many people's Christmases and the Met Office (气象局) has warned of more snow and ice in parts of the UK overnight.

Heathrow airport officials said no more than a third of all flights would operate until Wednesday and warned passengers to expect delays and cancellations, possibly until Christmas Day. Overcrowding was so bad in some areas that passengers with flights scheduled to depart from terminals 1 or 3 on Monday were told not to travel to the airport. It was said the south runway would remain closed on Tuesday and advised people not to travel to the airport unless their airline had confirmed the booking.

Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said aviation was a “safety-first business”. And in a statement, Mr. Hammond said rules on night flights would be relaxed for the next four days to help deal with the backlog. This would mean allowing incoming flights to arrive through the night.

Elsewhere in Europe, airports in Frankfurt, Paris, Florence and Amsterdam were severely disrupted (混乱) in addition to disruption to road and rail travel. By Monday evening, problems on the motorways seemed to be easing but BBC Travel was reporting severe disruption on the M25 in Surrey and the M58 in Merseyside.