Volume 3, No. 18. September 26,2003
Storming
through
An aquarium flooded. A theme park’s trees toppled. A zoo’s power lost.
A canvas roof ripped, a park buyout postponed, and an island of fun amid a community
in the dark. Hurricane Isabel swept ashore last Thursday afternoon at the North
Carolina Outer Banks and sped through a mid-Atlantic region of the United States
not frequented by such storms. Key components of this particular hurricane,
which had downgraded to a tropical depression by the time it moved through Philadelphia,
were the storm surge coming at high tide in the Chesapeake Bay and heavy rainfall
on a region already waterlogged from a summer of excessive rain.
Along the way Isabel
left a swath of unforgettable experiences among parks, zoos and aquariums.
Virginia Zoological
Park, Norfolk, Virginia
Despite losing 25 trees, the zoo suffered no damage to its exhibits or fence
lines, and a rapid cleanup effort on Friday had the park ready to open to the
public Saturday morning. Except, the park still had no power. Not until Tuesday
did power return, and Wednesday the zoo finally opened to the public. Generators
powered all animal holding gates and animal food storage, but not the restaurant
freezers. City ordinance required the zoo to throw all that food out and thoroughly
clean up the storage lockers and be re-permitted before putting food back in.
Thus, the restaurant remained closed, but the zoo’s Executive Director
Lewis Greene expected it to resume operations today or Saturday. “I’m
pleasantly surprised at how fast (city inspectors) have been getting to restaurants
all around the city to get them re-permitted,” Green said.
The park’s
annual ZooToDo fundraiser was scheduled for last Saturday and has been re scheduled
for tomorrow. Afterward, the zoo plans to help a neighbor in need, the Norfolk
Botanical Garden, which lost more than 400 trees and took significant damage
to four of its gardens. “As soon as we’re done with ZooToDo we’ll
send our staff over to help them out,” Greene said. Given that Isabel did
little damage to his own property, Greene was thankful for the experience. “Now
we’re going to sit down and figure out what we did well and what we need
to work on so we can be prepared for the next storm. Before the storm hit, I
instructed the staff to write things down. I told them 'When you find something,
think about something, don’t depend on remembering it later: write it down.'”
Busch Gardens,
Williamsburg, Virginia
With plenty of warning of Isabel’s coming, the Busch Gardens staff spent
a week preparing for the storm. “We took in anything that could be a projectile,”
said Diane Centeno, public relations manager at the park. “We took in all
our Howl-O-Scream decorations and stored them, took in picnic tables and hanging
baskets and boarded up windows.” The landscape-award-winning park couldn’t
take in its trees, though. The number downed was “substantial,” Centeno
said, though she didn’t have an exact number. One tree fell on the Skyride
cables, so that ride will remain closed for the rest of the season. Otherwise,
Busch Gardens escaped structural damage.
Busch Gardens used
its own landscaping staff and called in other experts to clean up the debris
and inspect remaining trees to ensure their safety, a job which meant keeping
the park closed throughout the weekend, although full power did not return to
the park until Monday, anyway. The park was to reopen today with a soft opening
of Howl-O-Scream, which was supposed to have had its grand opening today, but
all of the decorations and attractions will not be restored until next week,
Centeno said. Meanwhile, Busch Gardens had staff issues to consider. “We
had a lot of employees who had personal issues to take care of,” Centeno
said, like tree damage on their own properties and continuing power outages.
Busch Entertainment consequently authorized early paycheck distribution to its
employees. “People need money. They’ve been without power so they're
having to pay for more food and batteries,” said Centeno, who did not get
power back to her own home until Tuesday.
Paramount’s
Kings Dominion, Doswell, Virginia
In Virginia alone, more than 1.8 million customers were without power. More
than 9,000 utility poles fell thanks to the combination of wind, rain and an
already soggy earth. In the middle of this darkness stood Paramount’s Kings
Dominion, literally a beacon of light. The park didn’t even lose power
in the height of the storm. “Our remote location (in the rural space between
Richmond and Washington), which sometimes causes people to say we’re out
in the middle of nowhere, was a benefit this time,” said Michael Sanfilippo,
the park’s advertising and public relations manager. “We get our power
direct from a substation, and our wires are under ground.”
Except for a few
toppled trees—none in any of the landscaped areas—Kings Dominion suffered
no damage and could have opened Saturday. However, after a thoroughly cleaning
and inspection, the park opened Sunday to what Sanfilippo described as a “typical
crowd on a fall Sunday. People didn’t have power, electricity, telephone;
they needed something to do.” Because Busch Gardens was still closed, Kings
Dominion also honored that day’s Busch Gardens tickets as well as season
pass holders. Then, in the middle of the afternoon, park officials decided to
open again on Monday because the schools would be closed. “We felt we could
staff the park adequately,” Sanfilippo said. “We were doing what we
felt to be a public service to our community.” He said park management
was “very satisfied” with the attendance, “considering we made
the decision mid-afternoon Sunday. We did some scrambling to get the word out.”
Six Flags America,
Largo, Maryland
Like the region’s other theme parks and zoos, Six Flags America staff spent
the days before Isabel’s arrival battening down the park. “As soon
as we heard (of the storm’s path), the 411 went out via e-mails and meetings,”
said Public Relations Manager Karin Korpowski. “We took down any signs
that were not fixed directly to a building, took in all the trash bins, tied
down all the (waterpark) rafts and lawn chairs, cleared all the drains.”
At stake for the
weekend were two private buyouts of the park. With no power Saturday morning,
that day’s event was postponed a week. When electricity returned to the
park just before noon, operations and maintenance crews spent the rest of the
day inspecting and testing all the rides, and Sunday’s private event “went
off without a hitch,” Korpowski said. Meanwhile, the Annapolis resident
remained Thursday without power at her own home. “I think I’m the
last one (on the staff) who doesn’t have power,” she said.
National Aquarium,
Baltimore, Maryland
Preparation, dating all the way back to the aquarium’s construction, saved
the Inner Harbor institute from certain catastrophe as Isabel’s surge flooded
downtown Baltimore. For the purpose of architectural drama as well as the potential
of 100-year flood levels, the aquarium design locates all the animal exhibits
above the ground floor. Thursday’s surge was a 100-year flood. The aquarium
has permanently installed backup generators which can provide 36 hours of coverage,
and a supply of oxygen is kept on hand should the generators fail. Upon Isabel’s
approach, the aquarium pre-leased a tractor-trailer sized generator to arrive
immediately after the storm “in case power was interrupted and restoration
delayed,” said Jenny Fiegel, media relations assistant manager. Thirteen
staff rode out the storm in the main aquarium building and another four stayed
on at an off-site animal care center.
All of that preparation
proved essential. As flood waters began seeping into the building the staff
cut off the electrical supply themselves as a preventive measure and turned
operations over to the generators. But the generators sputtered off when water
got into their main fuel tanks. The staff then supplied animals with oxygen
for several hours until new fuel could be ferried in for the generators. The
normal power supply was restored Friday afternoon. Though the exhibits and animals
were above the flood waters, the ground floor conservation/education and volunteer
offices endured significant damage. Both staffs now occupy a single classroom,
“A lot of people in a small space,” Fiegel said. “But everybody
has pulled together to make sure we get through this.” The aquarium reopened
Sunday and hosted 3,000 visitors, which was “close to what we were expecting”
without the storm, Fiegel said.
New Jersey State
Aquarium, Camden, New Jersey
The irony here was that while the aquarium officials knew Isabel would probably
strike—and it was not much more than a tropical depression when it did
strike—they knew they’d lose their giant tent top which covers the
aquarium’s 760,000-gallon (2,877-kiloliter) Open Ocean Tank housing, among
its 4,000 animals, 13 sharks. The canvas roof had already ripped during one
of the Philadelphia area’s heavy snowfalls this past winter, and the aquarium
was still finalizing bids for a new temporary cover before it could build a
hard structure later this year.
The aquarium secured the canvas as well as possible and had engineers posted to watch the tent. Sure enough, when Isabel rolled in about 7 p.m. (19,00) the canvas started ripping. The engineers sent out an SOS, and various staff came in to drag the tarp away from the shark tank. “It sounded like a movie to me,” Public Relations Manager Jesse Cute said. “All these people working through the storm, in the darkness, rain pelting them” heroically saving sea life. Then the aquarium’s publicity team jumped on the incident for its promotional value because the Open Ocean Tank now had no roof, allowing aerial views and a look at the tank in open sunshine. “Never before have the animals been so vivid,” said an aquarium press release.
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.
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