Tiger That Fled Flooded Georgia Zoo Is Killed After Mauling a Man

Mangalore Today News Network

Moscow, Russia, June 18, 2015:  A white tiger that had survived this weekend’s torrential flooding killed a man Wednesday and was shot and killed itself, putting a horrifying end to a thoroughly depressing and occasionally bizarre few days for residents in Tblisi, Georgia.

 

At least 19 people died in the deluge, which decimated the city zoo, a beloved institution that has become the most vivid symbol of the tragedy.

Six people remained missing Wednesday, and damage from the flooding was estimated at $45 million. Among the dead were three workers at the zoo, which lost more than 300 of its 600 animals, including bears, tigers, lions, reptiles and birds, said Mzia Sharashidze, a zoo spokeswoman reached by telephone.

Swollen by heavy rains, the Vere River, which flows through the heart of this city of more than 1 million, burst its banks late Saturday night, sending a torrential wave down the hills overlooking the zoo and other flood-prone areas of Tblisi.

As the waters rose, residents from nearby high-rises posted pictures on social media and said that people trapped in the flood area were using flashlights to signal for help.

"People in nearby houses could hear others screaming for help, please save us," Zaza Shatirishvili, a literary critic and university professor, said in a telephone interview. "But they could not do anything. There was no light."

Many of the animals whose enclosures were on the hillside, like elephants and zebras, survived, Sharashidze said. The worst affected were the predators, the lions, tigers and bears that lived in the basin of the valley.

When some of those animals swam out of their enclosures and sought higher ground, many were shot by the police, Sharashidze said, although she could not say how many.

"This is what happens when it is the question of an animal life or a human life," she said by telephone.

"For us it was a really big tragedy," she continued. "They were like children for our zookeepers. They had nursed many of them from childhood."

As the floodwaters receded Sunday morning, surreal scenes were revealed in the capital: a bear perched on a second-story windowsill, a crocodile lurking next to cars on a washed-out road and a hippopotamus grazing from a tree.

The police fanned out to tranquilize or, citing security concerns, kill the escaped animals. On Monday, Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili announced that the police had accounted for all the animals that posed a threat to humans. After the tiger attack Wednesday, he apologized, saying that he had been misled by zoo officials and that patrols would continue.

Levan Butkhuzi, the editor-in-chief of National Geographic Georgia and a close friend of the zoo director, Zurab Gurielidze, said that he rushed to the scene at 2 a.m. and that the zoo looked as if it had been hit "by a tsunami." The zoo was covered by more than 12 feet of water, he said, and Gurielidze was on the second story of a building, trapped by the floodwaters.

In the following days, much of the stress for tallying the missing animals and coordinating the search fell on Gurielidze’s shoulders, who on Wednesday announced that he was responsible for telling the police that all the animals had been accounted for.

"He had to coordinate all this, a guy who barely survived, and when he saw that his staff had died in front of his eyes, and the animals had died in front of his eyes, and he was obliged to coordinate everything," Butkhuzi said in a telephone interview. "That’s really beyond the capacity of any person."

Local news outlets reported Wednesday that an African penguin had appeared on Georgia’s border with Azerbaijan, apparently having swum more than 30 miles downstream from the zoo. Sharashidze said that zoo workers had searched for the penguin but had not been able to find it.

Since Sunday, hundreds of residents have volunteered to help dig the city out from under the mud and debris left by the flood.

"I have not seen a response from civil society like this here for many years," said Shatirishvili, the literary critic.

It was one of those volunteers, a 43-year-old worker at a local warehouse, who was attacked by the tiger Wednesday when he entered the building. Georgian television showed footage of men with automatic rifles running toward the warehouse. Shots rang out, and the dead tiger was carried out on a metal stretcher. The worker later died in the hospital of wounds to his throat.

"We wanted to tranquilize the tiger, but it was very aggressive and was attacking," Vakhtang Gomelauri, Georgia’s interior minister, told television journalists at the scene of the mauling. "So unfortunately, we had to kill the tiger."

 

Courtesy: NDTV