Zoo Says It’s Prepared if Catastrophe Strikes

When emergencies like a major earthquake or the fire that burned in Griffith Park on Tuesday threaten the city’s zoo, trained personnel stand by with specially built crates, ready to evacuate the animals.

But crating up and moving a zoofull of anxious ostriches, nervous lions and troubled vipers in the middle of an emergency is not a task for the faint-hearted, the facility’s chief veterinarian, Charles Sedgwick, said Wednesday.

“Ostriches can kick forward hard enough to rip you wide open,” he said. “Big cats? Well, you can appreciate the danger there. And king cobras, they’re up to 16 feet long and they’re aggressive. They don’t run away from you, they run at you. They’re fast, and each of them has enough venom to envenomate all of Glendale.”

Sedgwick said that if a massive earthquake shattered the reptile house and freed the giant vipers, “we’d have to be very careful. We’d go in there armed with shotguns.”

Although Tuesday’s fire never got close enough to the zoo to force an evacuation of the animals, ash rained down on many of the outdoor animal compounds and smoke swirled throughout the facility.

“But it was the [City Fire Department] helicopters, swooping down, that bothered the animals the most,” Sedgwick said. “That was of concern to the gorillas. They refused to go into their bedrooms last night, so they ate their dinners outside.”

He said the compound containing Speke’s gazelles--a species about the size of a fox terrier--was on the side closest to the fire, and as a precaution, several of them were crated up for removal. But the fire never posed any serious threat, he said, and none of the animals had to be moved.

Sedgwick said the zoo has an evacuation plan that calls for the animals nearest any fire to be crated up first and moved to some other spot on zoo property that is not immediately threatened.

Hundreds of crates--all tailored to the animals they will contain--are kept on hand for such emergencies. For many big animals, like antelopes and giraffes, the crates must be fitted tightly so the animals cannot rear up and injure themselves.

If major portions of the facility are threatened, the crates can be moved out onto the zoo’s parking lot. If large areas of the zoo are damaged--such as in a catastrophic earthquake--the animals would be trucked to other zoos and animal care facilities until the zoo facilities here could be repaired. No one zoo could take all the animals because none has the space, Sedgwick said.

He said crating and moving animals quickly in an emergency situation can be very difficult.

Although some big animals, like elephants, generally are docile and can simply be led to safety, others such as the big cats--lions, cheetahs, panthers and tigers--are so dangerous they must be tranquilized before they are placed in the crates.

Birds pose a variety of problems.

“With birds, you just grab ‘em, but when it comes to condors, you really have to know what you’re doing,” Sedgwick said. “Obviously, any bird that can tear the hide off a cow has a strong beak. And when you get up close, they fall over backwards and strike out with their feet.”

Owls, he said, can lash out with sharp talons.

“With ostriches, it’s that strong forward kick,” he said. “When you enter the pen, they wave their wings, hiss and march right at you. It increases your heart rate a little.”

Fortunately, he said, ostriches don’t kick sideways, “so you learn to approach them from the side. You slip a sack over their heads--hoodwink them--and they become docile. After that, you can just lead them around.”

Sedgwick said there is little chance that even a severe earthquake would damage the reptile house enough to let loose the deadly vipers.

“We know they’re dangerous,” he said. “We built their cages like Steinway pianos.”