'It was like: how is this possible': 5 years after flood, zookeeper recalls frantic effort to save animals

Five years have passed since the 2013 floods devastated many parts of Calgary, but for Colleen Baird, the memories of frantically ushering hippos, giraffes and tigers to safety at the Calgary Zoo are still fresh in her mind.

Baird was part of the team of zookeepers, curators and other staff that faced an unprecedented situation when flood waters inundated the zoo's St. George's Island site.

"It was one of those moments that goes by quickly because you're so active, but we were literally moving animals until one in the morning," Baird told The Homestretch on Thursday.

Baird is one of the voices in a new Discovery Channel documentary that details the critical hours leading up to and after the Bow River peaked, as zoo staff struggled to save the animals.

Flood plan was overwhelmed

That day started with the warning of a flood, Baird recalled, but it was nothing unusual for the zoo, which had a flood plan in place. However as the rain continued to fall and waters continued to rise, they soon realized they'd need to move many of the animals to higher ground — and some off the island entirely.

"We were shown a map of where the water is going and that's when it hit us: we need to take bigger action at this point," she said.

Among the animals slated to go to the zoo's animal health centre, located off the island, were the tigers. And moving them was no easy feat.

"We had to anaesthetize I believe six tigers at the time," Barid said. "And it takes a while for them to fall asleep. So you put the drug in and you have to wait and you have to monitor them."

While zoo staff stood by with rifles, in case of an altercation, Baird and the vet staff monitored their breathing to make sure each animal was safely unconscious. From there, each cat was moved to safety one at a time.

"We had to pull them out of the tiger building and put them in crates and then drive them up to our animal health building and then come back and get another one," she said.

'Water up to its armpits'

Next up, Baird attended to the giraffes. When she reached them, she could hardly believe her eyes.

"I'd never seen a giraffe with water up to its armpits, and giraffes are really tall," she said. "It was one of those moments where it was like 'how is this possible?'"

All zoo staff could do in that moment was offer the stunned animals some food. When they came back the next day to lead them to higher ground, they faced another obstacle.

"Giraffes like to see where they're stepping and when you're flooded and in water they can't see where they're walking toward," said Baird. Zoo staff attempted to encourage the animals to move to higher ground, but they weren't having it.

"They had to go through more water to get out of water and they just weren't working with us, they just couldn't take that leap and take those steps into more water."

Ultimately, staff came up with a Plan B, which was to recede the water in the building and lead the animals to higher ground through a more familiar route.

Not all of the animals were distressed by the rising waters however. For aquatic animals, like hippos, the water brought another risk: escape.

'Is the hippo out?'

During a survey of the flood damage by boat, Baird nearly came face-to-face with a hippopotamus mere moments from making a break for the Bow River.

"The window glass was broken of the hippo building, and I was like: oh no, does that mean the hippo is not here? Is the hippo out?" she recalled. "And then I saw this hippo head come up and look at us."

At first she was relieved, until she realized how close the animal was to open water.

"Then I thought, 'wait a minute, there's a hippo there, and I'm right here, and we could touch each other."

Baird and the zoo's director at the time, Jake Veasey, acted quickly to prevent an escape.

"Luckily we were able to flood a very large shipping container that we had for hay storage, and we sunk that right in front of that window, and we tied it down to keep hippos from thinking about coming out."

There were some losses that day, however. Baird said several fish died after being shocked by the change in temperature and the polluted water. One peacock was also found dead. All in all, however, it could have been much worse.

"It was quite a feat for us to move as many animals as we did that night and to have minimal deaths, mainly fish, I can't speak enough about the team that worked with us that night, it was pretty amazing."

Alberta Floods: Rogue Earth premiers this Sunday at 7 p.m. MT on Discovery Channel.

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With files from The Homestretch