Emails show SF zookeepers pushed for extra help, warned of hazards before gorilla death

More than a year before a closing hydraulic door fatally crushed a 16-month-old gorilla, zookeepers pushed for extra staff to monitor the San Francisco Zoo’s youngest gorilla and warned that young gorillas had trouble understanding the zoo’s electric doors, documents show.

National agencies and an investigator hired by the zoo are trying to piece together what happened Nov. 7 when Kabibe, a western lowland gorilla who was born at the zoo in July 2013, somehow ended up pinned underneath one of the doors to the gorillas’ nighttime enclosure at closing time.

Initial information released by the zoo shows that the zookeeper “appeared” to not follow protocol by keeping a hand on an emergency stop button to the doors as they closed.

Emails and documents obtained by The San Francisco Examiner on Friday show that gorilla keepers warned that young gorillas did not understand closing doors, and that after Kabibe was introduced to the group, workers pushed for a third zookeeper who was never hired.



http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/emails-show-sf-zookeepers-pushed-for-extra-help-warned-of-hazards-before-gorilla-death/Content?oid=2912089