'We've used hallways, we've used bathrooms': How zoos protect animals when hurricanes hit

Although she and her colleagues were starting to see the winds and rains get stronger as the eyewall of storm Helene moved north of them on 26 September, Kelly Martin called her husband at about 20:30 to tell him she would be home by midnight at the latest.

As the vice president of zoological care, Martin had to ensure all animals at the Florida Clearwater Marine Aquarium were hunkered down and safe through the hurricane, and she was part of the "ride-out team", the workers who'd be riding the storm out with the animals. But the mood was optimistic that the impact would be minimal. "We were all feeling really good," says Martin, who has been working at the aquarium for 14 years. 

It was barely past 21:00 when the building started taking in water. It gushed down the streets outside, and began seeping into the aquarium, leaving them 4ft (1.2m) deep in a saltwater flood.

"I try and maintain calmness, I project confidence, but I'll tell you, internally, this was probably one of the more scary events that we've gone through," says Martin. The power cut off.

The team checked the animals were safe in their tanks and transferred those they could to higher ground, then swiftly moved to safety on the fourth floor when they realised it was too unsafe to continue their work on the ground floor. That's where they waited out the storm through the night. 

At 03:00, when her "life check" alarm rang, Martin knew the water levels would have settled down enough to go back down and make her way safely through the whole aquarium, assessing damage to the tanks and exhibits.

"That was sort of a sombre walk," says Martin. "You see the damage. You're devastated and your heart sinks."

Freezers, veterinary equipment, water pumps, laundry machines, air compressors and many other essential tools were wrecked. All the animals, however, were safe. "I really had to take a moment to be thankful for what was still alive," says Martin. "It was this tired sense of relief."

Because of the damage caused to their tanks, Martin arranged to quickly relocate seven sea turtles and two manatees, Yeti and Zamboni. The animals were transported, with the help of local law enforcement, to other facilities in the state in the following 48 hours. 

Every day since, Martin's team has been working to clear the water, clean up, inventory and repair everything that's been broken and lost, she says. "There's a significant amount of work to be done over the next few weeks to months," says Martin.

She doesn't yet know when they'll be able to recover fully, but says she considers the response to Hurricane Helene a success: her team deployed the aquarium's storm preparation plan without a blip. The plan is thoroughly reviewed and updated by the organisation every year, says Martin, and consists of moving equipment and animal exhibits to higher grounds if necessary. Through Helene, they kept their animals as safe as they could. 

Now the aquarium is bracing for the impacts of Hurricane Milton, less than two weeks after the destruction from Helene. It's just one of many zoos and aquariums making urgent preparations. The Florida Aquarium has moved nine penguins, a smack of moon jellies, six snakes, three lizards, three turtles, two alligators, two toads and a hermit crab from their enclosures on the first floor to higher, safer ground.

Mote Marine Laboratory in nearby Sarasota also sustained substantial damage from Hurricane Helene. The storm also destroyed the main access route bridge to the Western North Carolina Nature Center, which will be closed for the foreseeable future, and flooded and felled trees in South Carolina’s Greenville Zoo.

As climate change is causing more extreme storms like Hurricane Helene – with stronger wind, heavier rainfall and more flooding – most zoos, aquariums and other animal facilities across the US are reviewing and upgrading their extreme weather plans on a yearly basis and doing their fair share of doomsday prepping. 

Zoos and aquariums typically have tailored emergency plans that they perfect and rehearse all year round. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, animal facilities are required to have plans in place under the 2006 Animal Welfare Act. Facilities can also be recognised as "StormReady" by the National Weather Service. To be accredited by the national Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), facilities must have at least four live-action emergency drills each year for the extreme weather events that are most appropriate to their region, says Dan Ashe, the organisation's president – be it fire, tornado, hurricane, flood, or something else. This means staff need to be "trained and prepared to deal with whatever is going to come their way", says Ashe. 

Similarly, the animals need prepping. Flamingos, for instance, live outside and must be moved to hurricane shelters during storms, so several times a year, zookeepers at Palm Beach Zoo, Florida, train the birds to follow them to shelter.

"We're not sure if the flamingos think they are shorter humans or they think that we're really pale flamingos, but because of that relationship, they want to hang out with us, and so we just ask them to walk with us," says Mike Terrell, the zoo's curator of animal experiences. They practice this regularly by strolling around the zoo on clear days, so when the emergency time comes "it's just part of their day", he adds.

Palm Beach zookeepers also school Fred and Wilma, the zoo's two 9ft (2.7m)-long American alligators, how to go into their hurricane-safe areas daily. And every day, they teach the howler monkeys how to lock themselves into their transport crates so they can be transported to safety. They tutor Sassy, the panther, to recognise the bell ring indicating she needs to retreat to her enclosure.

"It makes it into a game. It makes it fun," says Terrell. "By repeating that over and over, even during times when no one is stressed, the hope is that when that stressful time comes they're not so suspicious of what's going on."

Facilities also tend to have emergency generators, and access to emergency refrigerator trucks. They trim back trees. They stockpile food, water and other critical supplies in centralised locations that are easily accessed by staff. But they also need to secure stable supply chains for food that cannot be preserved for long, like fresh eucalyptus branches for koalas, says Terrell. And at least somebody on Terrell's rideout team has to know how to make the heart medication milkshake for their geriatric anteater, Cruz.

"Every single one of those species requires specialised care, and you need all of those resources at hand to be able to care for them," says Terrell.

During Hurricane Irma in 2017, Palm Beach Zoo lost a tree frog, an otter and an aracari bird, likely due to stress caused by the havoc of the storm. Two African antelopes died at Florida's Naples Zoo during the same storm. But this was a relatively minor loss compared to some. The Audubon Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans lost almost all of its 10,000 animals from over 530 species  – including half a dozen sand tiger sharks, as well as several sea horses, sawfish, jellyfish, stingrays, and piranhas – during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 when it lost power and its backup generator failed.

Safety drills rarely include evacuation plans, though. Making the animals leave the zoo area completely is extremely stressful for them, and zookeepers cannot risk that strain on the animals, says Greg Peccie, director of animal care and welfare at Riverbank Zoo in South Carolina. Even when storms are known to be coming, they don't always make landfall the way they've been forecasted to. 

Instead, most facilities have hurricane-resistant enclosures right where the animals normally live – bunkered houses and barns made of welded metal and poured concrete, adjacent to their open pen, in which they can retreat every night. 

"The animals don't know it's a hurricane. The animals are just like, 'Wow, it's really windy, you know? Wow, it's really rainy'," says Peccie. "A lot of the animals have a predator-prey mentality, and they're creatures of habit. They want to do what they did yesterday because they did it and they didn't get eaten by a lion." 

Moody Gardens, a zoo and resort in Texas, experienced approximately $50m (£38m) in damage from floods from Hurricane Ike in September 2008 when the storm surge flooded its rainforest exhibits and squandered the electrical grid, air-conditioning and heating equipment, and lighting. After the storm, the team installed waterproof doors and seals in areas where the surging water had entered.

"As we made repairs, we included resilient solutions to the building flooding we saw during Ike," says animal husbandry manager Greg Whittaker. 

When those specialised areas aren't available, zookeepers fashion animal shelters in the buildings meant for humans. "We've used hallways, we've used bathrooms, offices, anything we can to keep [animals] kind of contained in the same buildings," says Tiffany Burns, associate curator at Zoo Tampa. "Any building is an option, and nothing is out of the question."

One famous example is when Zoo Miami staff sheltered flamingos in a men's bathroom during Hurricane Andrew in 1992. "The restrooms were perfect," says Ron Magill, the zoo's goodwill ambassador. "They had no windows in them, they had a tile floor so it was easy to put bedding on and clean afterward. And as gross as it sounds, they had toilets that had water in them. So we cleaned the toilets out to give them a source of water."

It may have been unorthodox, but it worked. "Needless to say, putting these flamingoes in the bathroom to ride out Hurricane Andrew likely saved their lives," says Magill. 

The same flamingo flock spent Hurricane George in 1998 and Hurricane Floyd in 1999 in the bathroom too, says Magill.

During Hurricane Andrew, a category five storm whose eyewall went right through the centre of Zoo Miami, with winds exceeding 150mph (241km/h), the zoo was shredded to pieces. The zoo's monorail track was taken off its stanchions and whipped around. "It looked like a twisted coat hanger," says Magill. The pine rockland forest surrounding the zoo had trees "all twisted and broken as if they were toothpicks", says Magill. "It's as if God came through here with a 25-mile-wide weed whacker and just flattened everything out."

The open chain link pen that homed Toshi, a gargantuan black rhino had holes in the fencing "like a cannonball had been shot through", says Magill. Five mammals died from drinking water with debris, and over 100 birds from the zoo's aviary were killed when the entire structure collapsed as it was hit by a trailer flung towards it "like a torpedo".

Magill's team hadn't prepared for an event which destroyed the entire facility and had no places to contain most of their animals. That's why, he says, another crucial step of extreme weather preparedness is making prior arrangements with other animal facilities in the area where they can send animals to recover from the storm.

"Not only do we have to plan to protect our animals, but we also have to plan to move them out when they survive, and the facility that holds them does not," says Magill.

Organisations like Zoo Disaster Response, Rescue, and Recovery (ZDR3), a zoological disaster network with members from more than 175 facilities across the US, provide assistance by sharing facilities and deploying personnel with special expertise in moments of crisis.

Alliances among facilities that cater to similar animals also help get people organised and collaborative. For instance, Burns – Zoo Tampa's associate curator – is also the president of the Manatee Rescue and Rehabilitation Partnership: she responded to the call from Martin's team when they needed help relocating their two manatees.

"We absolutely stepped in," says Burns. Since they too rescue, rehabilitate and release manatees, they already had trucks especially fitted to transport the heavy marine mammals. Now, they’ll be taking care of Yeti and Zamboni until they're ready to be released into the wild, together with other manatees that have been displaced by the hurricane, like one they saved from being stranded on Hernando Beach on 3 October. 

Martin's team, instead, will work to get their systems back up and running so they're ready for the next manatees to move in. "There's plenty of manatees, unfortunately, that need homes and require care."