Guest guest Posted July 11, 2008 Report Share Posted July 11, 2008 Stranded Zoo Visitors Got a Taste of Captivity Sign In to E-Mail or Save This Print Reprints Share Digg Facebook Mixx Buzz Permalink By RALPH BLUMENTHAL Published: July 11, 2008 The baboons were walking free at the Bronx Zoo on Wednesday night. The humans were in cages — trapped in storm-tossed Skyfari gondolas high above the wildlife, the lookers turned into the looked-at, and vice versa. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Keith Bedford for The New York Times At the Bronx Zoo on Thursday, the Skyfari ride was not operating, but things were normal otherwise. Related Dozens Stuck in Midair at the Bronx Zoo (July 10, 2008) Enlarge This Image Keith Bedford for The New York Times Safe behind glass and on solid ground, visitors observed a tiger at the Bronx Zoo on Thursday. Investigators are still determining what caused the Skyfari to malfunction. Enlarge This Image Rob Bennett for The New York Times The rescue on Wednesday. After three people were taken out of a disabled car, the ride restarted. Danica Herbert, one of 37 stranded zoo visitors, did not like the role reversal one bit. Out of one window of Car 44, dreading what lay beneath, she could glimpse the zoo’s World of Darkness, home to fruit bats and glowing scorpions. On the other side, she saw grass and trees and the outline of a scurrying animal. “It felt like a cage,†Ms. Herbert, 22, a human-resources assistant for a marketing company, said after being freed with her family. “It was like we were little hamsters, like we can’t even do anything.†Nearby, trapped in Car 46, a 4-by-5-foot box just five feet high, Evan Hodos and Meiki Pang, on a date, envied the relative freedom of their four-legged, winged and slithering animal brethren below. “At least they have a bigger running area than we did,†said Ms. Pang, 26. “I could feel their pain, but we only had a 5-by-4 cell.†For reasons that the State Department of Labor, which regulates rides, is trying to determine, about 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, as rain spattered the zoo, a wheel on one of the cars slipped off the overhead cable running from 60 to 100 feet above the ground, halting all 14 gondolas and stranding 30 adults and seven children for up to five hours. (The three people in the disabled car were rescued by a crane about three hours after the breakdown.) There are no answers yet, said Leopoldo Rosales, a department spokesman in Albany. An inspector arrived at the zoo about 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, he said, adding, “The investigation is continuing.†The ride has been shut down indefinitely. Each car can carry up to four passengers, or a maximum weight of 680 pounds. As part of the investigation, Mr. Rosales said, the failing cable car and its equipment will be examined; witnesses, including the Skyfari operator and workers present at the time of the mishap, will be interviewed, as will those passengers who were stranded when the ride abruptly stopped. He said the ride is inspected annually. The last inspection was in April, when one violation was found: In the control room, an extension cord was being used to charge batteries for two-way radios, and it presented a hazard because people could trip on it. Mr. Rosales said that an outlet was installed within a month. “There have not been, in our records, any accidents in this tram in the past,†Mr. Rosales said. He said that the tram was put into service in 1974. “It’s not the most complex one out there,†he said. “There’s only two trams in New York City, that one and the one in Roosevelt Island.†If the denizens below — lions, giraffes, zebras, gorillas, bears and bugs — drew any satisfaction from the situation, they were not saying, but they probably knew something was up, said Marc Bekoff, a former professor of animal behavior at the University of Colorado and author of “The Emotional Lives of Animals,†a book published last year. “If people are jumping around and screaming, animals would probably pick up on that,†Dr. Bekoff said. But he said, “They were probably not close enough to smell the fear, which would be extremely disturbing.†Mary Campbell, 42, a seasonal parks worker who was in Car 14 with her boyfriend, said the breakdown left them rocking in the wind and rain over the baboon reserve. She had her cellphone, though, and looking up the zoo’s number on a map visitors are given, called for information. “A lady answered the phone and said they’re going to get to it,†Ms. Campbell recounted. But she said that when a loudspeaker blared a garbled announcement, “I kind of freaked out.†“I can understand what animals feel,†she said. “You have no say in what happens to you. You lose all control.†But, she said, at that point, she envied the animals. “They get better treated than we did last night.†In Car 25 — the one that lost the wheel, causing the shutdown — Olga Perez, 45, a teaching assistant from New City, N.Y., her daughter, Joanna, 14, and a cousin, Sandra Prieto Sanchez, 45, visiting from Colombia, were suspended over the Mouse House. Other family members were in the next car and they kept in touch by cellphone. “We had water but we decided not to drink it,†Ms. Perez said. There was no bathroom in the gondola. They had used the zoo’s restrooms before embarking, but her nephew in the next car, Juan David Sanchez, 17, had not. He coped, he said later, by not thinking about it. Robin Dean, 25, from the Bronx, a teacher in a Queens private school who was stuck in Car 48 with a friend and the friend’s baby, was not afraid of the animals, she said — certainly not the flamingos she spied below. She was also not claustrophobic. But she was afraid of heights. “I thought, five minutes in a little box, I’ll be O.K.,†she said. “It turned into five hours.†She was also alarmed because she is pre-diabetic and had not eaten since breakfast. She emerged shaky but unharmed, she said. She also felt closer to her fellow creatures on the ground. “To be caged or deprived of food, water or companionship is a horrible thing,†she said. “Let’s have room to roam, for people too.†Richard Carroll, managing director of an African gorilla project for the World Wildlife Fund, said the mishap was not without value. “It’s a good lesson to humanity,†he said. “They’re now afraid, they’re now vulnerable. Humanity needs to learn humility. They’re not masters of the universe. They’re part of the natural world.†Al Baker, Javier C. Hernandez and Mathew R. Warren contributed reporting. More Articles in New York Region » With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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