Volume 3, No. 4. February 28, 2003
Heavy
duty
Like most city fire
department and rescue crews, the Los Angeles City Fire Department practices
for all the eventualities its trainers can dream up. “We train for a lot,”
said Carl Butler, a battalion chief for the department, “whether it’s
for terrorist activity or hazardous material or brush fires or ship fires or
aircraft accidents. But it’s pretty hard to train for an elephant down.
That’s a toughie.”
Butler’s crew got such a call from the Los Angeles Zoo one Saturday morning
three weeks ago when 8,000-pound African elephant Tara was found lying down
in a pond in her enclosure. The resulting three-hour rescue earned the fire
rescue team a city proclamation February 14 with a certificate of commendation
signed by Mayor James Hahn and the City Council.
The wild-born Tara, estimated to be about 43 years old, came to the Los Angeles
Zoo in 1966. She’s a “very temperamental elephant,” said Lora
LaMarca, the zoo’s marketing and public relations director. “She is
managed under protective contact.” She also has arthritis in her front
legs, and keepers believe she slipped while walking through her pool. She was
found at 7 a.m. February 8, and “all medical indications showed she had
not been down for long,” LaMarca said.
Keepers drained the pool, but Tara still couldn’t get enough leverage to
pull herself up. The zoo then called for help, the fire department’s heavy
rescue team. “We’ve had equine rescues in the Griffith Park area (the
Zoo’s location) with equine falling into ravines,” Butler said. “As
far as pachyderms, though, this was a first.”
Rescue crews, by training, work methodically, even in life-threatening situations,
as was this one: Tara was susceptible to internal injuries from the sheer weight
of organs compressing against each other. Because the pool did not allow enough
space to manipulate equipment, the rescuers placed heavy straps on Tara and
pulled her out onto the yard. Once there, the crews used a forklift to lift
her head and try to prod her to her feet, but she still couldn’t get up.
So, the rescue team lifted her with a crane. Three hours after she was found
down, Tara was on her feet.
The rescue crew liaisoned with the zoo’s veterinarians throughout the operation
as well as with the keepers to make sure neither the zoo staff nor rescue workers
were put in danger. Butler described the rescue as “quite a production”
but nothing his crew couldn’t handle, even if they had never trained to
lift pachyderms. “Our people are technically proficient,” he said.
“You had a very experienced and proficient crew come in. They know where
to place the pulleys, they know where to place the straps. Experience and training
were the key to that, not from zoo operations but from other emergency operations
we’re exposed to being in a big city.”
But when you pull a tractor-trailer back from a bridge precipice, the truck
doesn’t have an inclination to attack its rescuers. Tara at least remained
docile throughout the operation. Then, with the yard cleared of everybody else,
head keeper Jeff Briscoe used a long pole to remove the last strap from Tara’s
body. “Jeff finally gets it off, it falls to the ground, she lets out this
big bellow and races around the yard. Jeff just took off,” LaMarca said.
Butler described the scene as a bull chasing a matador over the fence in a bullfight
ring. “Then she started to eat and everybody said, ‘She’s definitely
back on her feet,’” he said.
THE LOOP is written and produced by Eric Minton, Minton Enterprises, LLC. To see more examples of Eric Minton's work and Minton Enterprises services, visit www.ericminton.com.
©2003, Minton Enterprises
LLC
All rights reserved