Damien Kong is a Zoologist for Miami’s Metro Zoo. Before Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida, he was a teacher for the Education Department. Because of the extensive damage, Miami’s Metro Zoo was closed down, and is now scheduled for reopening on December 18th.

Monreal: When did you first realize the hurricane might hit Miami?

Kong: On Saturday, Saturday evening.

Monreal: What were your first reactions in relation with your family and your job at Metro Zoo?

Kong: Well, my wife is the lead bird keeper at the Zoo, so she had to go in and secure a lot of the birds that were there. So while she was at the Zoo securing the birds, I was home trying to secure the house. I’ve got an eight monthold son, that also takes priority. We had to make sure that where we were was secure. We own a house, and between Bird Road and Coral Way, and it was not close to an area that was hit hard by the hurricane. So we got off easily. We lost a few trees, but everything else was OK.

Monreal: What preparations did you make at home and at work?

Kong: Did we go through that? OK.

Monreal: What did you think it would be like before the storm?

Kong:I’ve never been through a hurricane before, so I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. So, I expected that a lot of things were going to get blown down, like trees, um a lot of peoples patios, and stuff like that; and everything that I expected to have happened; a lot of these homes that were built around the Zoo that I thought wouldn’t make it didn’t make it.

Monreal: Were you expecting all the damage that had happened to the Zoo to happen?

Kong: No. A lot of the things that happened to the Zoo probably happened at something secondary. Like the aviary, we didn’t expect the aviary to go because the mesh, you know they told it would last. And it probably would have if we didn’t have tornadoes, and the tornadoes probably did more damage than the hurricane itself.

Monreal: What did the Metro Zoo do in preparation for the hurricane as a whole? What did they do with the animals, with the employees? I don’t know if you have an employer, but could you sense any fear or tension from the people you worked with and your employer?

Kong: A lot of people were afraid, as I said, my wife also works at the Zoo. They tried to prepare as much as they could. They secured all the animals that they thought could get blown away. They put all the animals in their night houses, in the back areas, so we did as much as we could. A lot of people said well why didn’t you put up all the birds in the aviary. Well, we don’t have cages for 300 birds. That’s just not a physical possibility. There’s also 1.7 acres, so you can’t just go out and catch all those birds. And that’s where we lost most of our animals. We only lost 5 mammals at the Zoo. And it one was a gibbon, which is a small ape. Three were antelopes, and one was a nonegure, which is an Asian wild ass. So we were relatively untouched as far as our mammal and reptile collection. As I said before, our largest hit was with birds, and there was just nothing we could do about it. Considering how few we lost, we did do a good job.

Monreal: When you say lost, do you mean lost physically or dead?

Kong: Lost, either dead or we don’t have them in our possession right now.

Monreal: During the hurricane, where were you?

Kong:I spent the hurricane in my house.

Monreal: Who was with you during the hurricane?

Kong: My wife, my son, and I had two friends also who lived further south in Leisure City.

Monreal: They needed to evacuate?

Kong: They were in the evacuation zone. Leisure City is right up against Homestead Air Force Base, and they were in an evacuation area, so they slept over. Actually, onlyit was a couple. The wife stayed with us. The husband was a policeman, and at about twelve/one o’clock he had to go on duty at night. So he left after that point. So he did spend the night, but not the whole night.

Monreal: What happened to you during the hurricane?

Kong: We were sleeping most of the time until about 3:30, and a friend of mine called because like a big chunk of his house blew away, and his phone was still working. So he called and woke us up! It was like “Why did you wake us up?” Otherwise we would have probably slept until the morning. But once he got us up, we turned on the television, and we moved into the living room, and we spent the rest of the storm in there.

Monreal: Did your electricity stay on the entire time?

Kong: No. We lost electricity around 4:30.

Monreal: What were your concerns during the hurricane in relation to your job at the Zoo?

Kong:Well, you know if the Zoo didn’t open, we could all lose our jobs. A lot of people did lose their jobs. With the Zoological society, only 16 people regained their jobs out of 41. So with the Zoo not being open, it’s hard to keep a lot of people on. So it was a big worry. I mean I was worried for about a month. Even right now, the nature of my job has changed. I’m not in education anymore. I’m a Zoologist by degree. I have a Zoology degree. And now I’m in fundraising until we do resurrect the Zoology department. Because we have to get the Zoo going before any other kind of program can get going.

Monreal: After the hurricaneWhat did you do right after the hurricane? What was the first thing you thought about, and what was the first thing you did?

Kong: You mean once the sun came up? Well, we tried to go outside and assess the damage to the outside of our house because we knew basically that inside was intact. There were no breaches; none of the windows blew in; none of the doors blew in the door. The roofs didn’t fly off, so. The house that we’re in is about 40 years old, and this is like the third or fourth hurricane that it’s been through. So it’s a season house. It was a house that had been proven before through hurricanes from before in the past. So I wasn’t too worried. I was worried about our trees and things like that. We lost the tree in the front in our front yard. We had a large black olive that fell down and like literally covered the front of the house, and it collapsed part of the roof to our front porchand that was the only damage done to our house. We lost a big chunk of our mango tree in the backyard.

Monreal: Did you return to the Zoo, and if so, when?

Kong:I returned to the Zoo the Wednesday after the hurricane.

Monreal: So that was about two days after?

Kong: About three days. My wife returned two days after.

Monreal: What was your first week like there? What was going on?

Kong:We spent most of the time cleaning up. Literally, the classrooms that I worked in and our office building were just totally destroyed. The roofs went off, and there was a lot of water damage. So we spent most of the time trying to salvage what we could out of the classrooms and the offices. Trying to salvage what we could with the animals that we had in the classroom and in what we call an ark. The ark is our building in which we maintain all the animals for the education department and for the petting zoo, which is pretty extensive. We’ve got quite a few animals. None of the roofs were actually lost, lost. It was just a lot of damage and a lot of water coming in. So we spent a lot of time making sure the animals were secured. Some of us took some of the animals home just to make sure that they were taken care of. We didn’t have electricity for weeks. So things like lightvied lights, heat lightswere just not available at the Zoo. So it was important that we took some of these animals, the small animals that were indoors hoped that we could get them back.

Monreal: Did you have facilities to take care of them like the lights and everything else at home?

Kong: Well, no I didn’t. But, in the classrooms there are now windows you can open. There are now outdoor windows, and there are two large glasspane walls but they’re heavily tinted so there’s very little sunlight that gets in there. So even if you don’t have electricity, you have to have an artificial source, and neither was available to me at the Zoo. So some of the animals that I maintained in the classroom I took home with me because my house is more open and there’s a lot of natural sunlight.

Monreal: What was your first impression once you saw when you got to the Zoo. I’m sure you weren’t expecting what you saw. What did you see and what changed as a result of the hurricane?

Kong: It was just overwhelming. There were trees down everywhere; buildings were damaged; roads were blocked. A lot of the roads had trees and rocks and debris all across the roads that you couldn’t drive. In other words, it was very hard to get out into certain areas of the Zoo. So it was hard to assess everything at one shot. What we did see was just overwhelming. My wife came home the first day and just cried and cried. There was just nothing we could do. A lot of the things that we had worked on for years at the Zoo were now gone or put on hold. One of our major projects that we had coming up was something called The South American Exhibit, tropical exhibit, rain forest exhibit. And we had already raised a few million dollars to build that, and it’s not even going to be getting off the ground. Some of that money was earmarkedthat means the money was donated specifically for that exhibit, that project. That means we can’t use it (for the rebuilding of the Zoo). We did try to get whatever money we could set aside for these different things converted into relief money, but some people basically, you know, “it’s either this or nothing else,” and I won’t say who or anything about that. So that money basically is just taken back by the people, which is understandable. If you have a specific reason for using that money, you don’t want it used (for other purposes).

Monreal: Did you provide any assistance to the Zoo? I take it as far as cleaning, you went for how long a period a time?

Kong: Just cleaning up? We probably spent the first month and a half cleaning up the Zooripping out carpets, picking up roofing tiles, moving trees, clearing walkways. That was all anybody did for about a month and a half. We were trying to salvage files and trying to move animals around that were not in secure cages or exhibits. We spent a lot of time the first month and a half just doing thattrying to secure all of these animals in their exhibits.

Monreal: For that time, did you have volunteers come in who didn’t work for the Zoo, who weren’t employed with the Zoo? Volunteers from the community?

Kong: We had some volunteers later on, not immediately. The reason we did not have volunteers immediately is because the Zoo was not secured in the sense that it wasn’t safe, in other words, with trees all over the place; and roofing material and fencing material and everything all over. If something were to have fallen and someone were to get injured, we would be liable for it. The only people that were allowed on the grounds were staff and docentspeople that were volunteers, and those people are covered by our insurance, and they also knowthey sign a release basically in that we’re not responsible if they get hurt. They did this at their own free will. You know when you have people just coming innot only that, the docents know all the rules. They know where not to go. They know what the perimeters are as far as the safe perimeters, you know, for functioning in the Zoo. So that’s also one of the reasons we didn’t allow people onto the grounds. Until we got the walkways cleared and areas that we thought we deemed safe, we didn’t bring anyone in from outside.

Monreal: What has happened to your job and the jobs of others?

Kong: A lot of the Zoo because of the changes that occurredlike most of the birds at the Zoo have been shipped out. A lot of the birds were recaptured from the aviary, for instance, but none of the birds were kept. They were shipped immediately to other facilities. We have birds all the way up to Nebraska. So, of that, say for instance, the bird department with the county has been split up. There are only three people in the bird department right now. The rest of the people have been put in the mammal sections because there’s just no way they can function. There are no birds, there are not that many birds at the Zoo that they need, you know, nine people say for instance. The Zoological society, about twothirds of the people were laid off. This is the private part of the Zoo, and with no programs being done and no revenue coming in through the gate, there is no way you can maintain that kind of a staff. So we basically with the Zoological society, not the county side, we gone to a very small, skeleton crew right now.

Monreal: So you are lucky basically. Is your wife employed right now with them?

Kong: Yeah. My wife works for the county though. The keepers are under the county. The county has been really good about keeping everybody, they haven’t fired. But they also have a larger money base to work with as far as whether that money comes in. You know, they have taxes that they can use too, and other revenues that they use to keep going until they do open. So it’s a big push right now to open the Zoo because we do need that revenue coming back in to even just keep us going at the level that we’re at right now. So, it’s kind of scary because of whatyou know, my job, in particular, has changed a lot. The education department was disbanded, and the head of the department was laid off, and everyone else in the department was put in fundraising to raise money. In the education department, three people were laid off. So it was pretty hard.

Monreal: So on a daily basis you are making phone calls  just trying to find fundraisers?

Kong: Well, everybody is doing different aspects in fundraising. We’re not allpart of it is calling. I’m in charge of working with malls and schools all different types from colleges down to high schools and elementary schools  to see what they can do to help us, not mainly directly in fundraising, maybe volunteering.

Monreal: Are you in charge of the Sawgrass Mills (Zoofari project)?

Kong: The Sawgrass Mills thing was actually started, not by the Zoological society, it was started by the county, and it’s basically a county project. We were brought in to assist, in other words. Usually when they have things that have to do with the public a lot, the Zoological society is more equipped. Our part of it, our aspect of it is more public relations. So, we were brought into it to help. So we worked together.

Monreal: How is the status of the Zoo today? What were its loses and what did it gain as South Florida’s relief effort continues?

Kong: Huh ...what has it lost and what has it gained.

Monreal: As far as I know, I wrote this downIs it definite that it’s going to be open December 18th or is that just tentative?

Kong: Everything’s definite. But they always tell us it’s definite, but this is the third time they have changed it. OK, that’s how definite it is. Is that definite enough for you? They say it’s definite, but as I said, they’ve already done itthey’ve already changed the date for reopening twice, or mean three times. They’ve changed it twice, but they’ve come up with three different dates. But that’s where it stands right now. They originally said they were going to open the preview center which was about 13 exhibits. Now they are saying they’re opening almost the whole Zoo. The only exhibits not going to be open are the koala exhibit; parts of the petting Zoo, which includes the elephant ride area; and definitely not the aviary. The aviary is not going to be open. The monorail will not be running. That will probably take months and months to put together as you saw from the slide. A lot of the track has been just knocked off basically. That thing weighs tons, so you can imagine the kind of winds that went through there to blow it off. So there are going to be aspects of the Zoo that aren’t going to be open, but we’re shooting for about 80% reopened. There are a lot of things that need to be done. We need to get what we call stumble fences, which are the little fences that keep the people away from the edge of the moats. We need to get large chainlink fences up that will keep the public from the behind the scenes area so they don’t go wandering back into the rhino pen or something, which is a serious danger for the people and the animals themselves. Some people tend to get a little malicious as you know. So we’re trying to get that done. Whether or not we are going to be successful is left to be seen. They will try to get most of that up. You know when the Zoo first opened, one of the biggest complaints that we ever had was that there wasn’t a lot of cover, shade. A lot of people here in South Florida were accustomed to the old Crandon Park Zoo, which was an old, old Zoo started back in 1948, when they had old trees that covered the walkways. It was very wellshaded so it wasn’t hot to walk around. MetroZoo, being so large, so much larger, I think Crandon was only about 23 acres/29 acresit was really small, considering that the increment in size that we became all of a sudden is very different. So to try and get that kind of lushness in that large a space, it will take even more years than it took Crandon. Now we’re back to square one. One of the things that people when they come to the Zoo should expect is that there is no shade.

 .......................It’s not like the photographs that I showed you. Most of those were taken within the first, I’d say, two weeks after the hurricane. We’ve done a lot of cleanup. But there is still a lot of damage. There’s a lot of concrete damage. None of the trees that were destroyed that we had to remove have been replaced yet. And one of the things you can imagine is that everybody and their uncle want to replace their trees, too. So, there are no trees out there on the market for us, and on top of that, the asking price for these trees is (astronomical). So, right now nobody’s replacing trees. If we can, we’ll look for trees outside in other areas, maybe further north here. We are looking for a reasonable price. We are talking, we can’t start out with little fourinch pot trees. We have to get mature trees, almost mature trees, young, almost mature trees because we need to get the walkway shaded; we need to get the animals shaded. Most of the animals right now when we let them out hide up against a rock or in between the rocks because it’s so hot that they’re trying to get away from the sun. This morning I went out to the chimp exhibit, and they had these little clusters of coral rock, and there were three of them sitting in the middle hiding from the sun because the sun was just blazing down on top of them.

Monreal: I’m sure they’re waiting for the winter if it ever gets cold down here.

Kong: Well, it’s getting cool right now so it helps that it’s been in the 60’s the last night before and stuff like that. So that helps to keep some of the animals the cool. We’re gonna need trees. We’re just gonna need trees, and unless we can get help from somewhere, either further north of here or from out west, we’re not going to be able to replace the trees in time, to do us any good. And a lot of shrubberywe need a lot of ground cover as you know. A lot of ground cover was just ripped up and thrown away.

Monreal: Are there any positive outcomes you have a seen as a result of the hurricane?

Kong: Yeah. No so much as far asI mean the destruction was pretty farreaching. But as far as personal relationships with people, definitely. One of the things that with our docents, we have about 150 active docents, probably 200 with inactive docents as our volunteers. They were able to, among themselves not even with staff help, contact each other. The people we couldn’t contact, other docents were able to contact by either physically going into the area that they were or getting the police to go into these areas to find them. People called the cops, and the police would go to that house if you called them, and looked for them. So we were able to locate all of our active docents. I mean that’s a lot of people. Another thing was that a lot of the keepers at the Zoo lost their homes. A lot of them were living with other keepers or on the Zoo grounds. The hospital became a hotel, and everybody was sleeping in the operating ward and the Xray wards on the floors, on mattresses, and all sorts of things. So you got closera lot of people are living together right now that probably weren’t that close as far as friends. It’s very hard to find housing down here right now as you probably know. It’s almost impossible to find housing down here. So, it’s only by the grace of other people that they’re having somewhere to stay. But for up to almost two months after the hurricane, people were still living at the Zoo. Some people actually stayed during the storm at the Zoo. Quite a few people stayed because their homes were in the evacuation area, and they had no where to go. They didn’t want to go to the shelters. So a lot of people came to the Zoo and spent the hurricane in the hospital.

Monreal: Did I hear a story that some guy actually stayed in the bathroom with the flamingoes during the hurricane?

Kong: No, nobody stayed with the flamingoes. That was a rumor. Everybody stayed in the hospital that was on grounds because that building had enough restroom facilities and all the other things that would be required for that many people inside the building. The administration building had glass on all sides, big glass panels that wouldn’t have been safe. There were only two restrooms in there you know, so it would not have been a good place to be. The only building on the Zoo grounds that had all of these things; showers, restrooms, a kitchen, was the hospital. So people literally lived inside the hospital for months. There was an unbelievable outcry from the people just coming in and helping us, not physically but by donations. People sent water to us. They sent food. We had piles of food at the Zoocanned food mainly that a lot of the keepers could just take, and not just keepers but maintenance staff and everybody else. And we took a lot of the food home so that we could survive because all the supermarkets and everything in our area were gone, were blown away. So if it weren’t for the food that was sent from up north, I don’t think most of us could have made it. I mean it was just unbelievable how people sent food for animals also. We got lots. We were donated everything from monkey biscuits to dog food and stuff. They donated clothes. We had literally our whole hay barn full of clothespeople donating clothes. So a lot of people, I mean my wife right now is still wearing some of the clothes that we got as donations from the hurricane. Pretty good clothes. Some were pretty not so good, too. But we tried our best to sort what was good out. We had a lot of fun doing that, too. You’d be surprised what people wore (laughs). Some of the things were pretty raunchy, and I couldn’t believe that people would donate things like used toothbrushes... I mean we’re desperate, but we’re not that desperate. You know what I mean?

Monreal: I guess it’s the thought that counts, right?

Kong: Well, it’s a tax writeoff. No, I’m just kidding. But, definitely I think some people have no clue, giving someone’s old brassieres and stuff. They’re kind of silly. But we survived, and we’re doing well.

Monreal: OK. Is there anything else that you’d like to tell us that we haven’t asked you?

Kong: About the storm? About what’s going on at the Zoo?

Monreal: I guess you can give an overall conclusion of what’s going to be happening.

Kong: Right now what we’re trying to do is get back to where we were before the hurricane. We’re going to try to get our collection back together. A lot of the animals that we had we’ve lost, not because of the hurricane, but because we had to ship them to other Zoos. We lost like our saddle booth storks. One was killed and broke its neck in a fence. One was killed in a crate. Well, he had suffered trauma somehow in the shipping, and he died like three days after he got to where his destination was. We lost our argus pheasants, which are the largest pheasants in the world. They survived the storm. We were able to recapture them. We sent them to Lion Country Safari. Raccoons broke into their facility and killed them both and ate them. So a lot of the animals that we had, we are not going to be able to replace because of the damage and because we have to ship them and we have to depend on other people to take care of them. And sometimes, you know they’re pretty stretched to take care of themselves. So we’re going to have a hard time just getting back on our feet as far as our collection, and a lot of the breeding programs that we were involved in we may not ever get back into. We might just give up because it would take so much effort. It had taken us so many years to get to that point that there’s no way we can at this point get back to where we were. It is just impossible. We’ll just have to go on to other projects and other ideas. So that has changed. You know, like I said about the South American exhibit, all new projects have basically been put on hold until we can get back on our feet. Until we have raised enough money to get everything at least back to where it was or better than it was before. That’s very, very important. So we’re trying. We’re really trying, and with that, we will recover. As they say on the television, we will be back. So we’re going to be back soon. If people are coming to the Zoo and expect what it was like before, they are going to be sadly mistaken. There is a lot of damage still, and it will take time before we get back to where we were before. You know it’s like when they first built the Zoo. They had access to a lot of material. If you wanted plywood, you could get plywood. If you wanted trees, you could get trees. You know, if we want plywood, we don’t get plywood. We have not put any of the chain-link fence up. All the chain-link that came down, if we were able to, we propped it up, and most of it was not prop-able. You know, it just stayed down. So we just don’t put animals in that area. Some of the fences are to keep people out. I don’t know what’s going to happen with that because we just aren’t able to get the contractors and things out there to put those fences up. And so it might take even longer to rebuild than it took to build the Zoo just because everybody else wants to rebuild. It wasn’t like when the Zoo was being built. So that is another problem. Contractors and things that normally wouldn’t charge us an arm and a leg now have access to so much that they don’t have to take or want to work for us. They can work for a lot of other people. So, we’re having a hard time getting contractors to do a lot of the work. So that’s it.