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Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Five cars damaged by fire at the zoo (with CNC3 video)

by

20130410

Five Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo pa­trons whose cars were de­stroyed by a fire on the La­dy Chan­cel­lor Road yes­ter­day are an­gry with zoo of­fi­cials for not alert­ing them to the sit­u­a­tion and not per­mit­ting them to use the zoo's emer­gency ex­its to save their ve­hi­cles.Nigel Mc Mayo's car was one of the ve­hi­cles com­plete­ly de­stroyed af­ter a fire, which start­ed in a bam­boo patch, spread to over­head ten­sion lines and en­gulfed his ve­hi­cle and oth­ers parked at the base of La­dy Chan­cel­lor Road around 2.45 pm.

Eye­wit­ness Ja­son Mc Mil­lan said the fire was so in­tense it even­tu­al­ly spread to the near­by Chan­cel­lor Hill. How­ev­er, two fire ten­ders from the Wright­son Road head­quar­ters and Bel­mont Fire Sta­tion re­spond­ed with­in 15 min­utes.Mc Mayo said: "I heard a com­mo­tion like fire and bam­boo burst­ing in­side the zoo. I came out to check on my ve­hi­cle on­ly to re­alise that the bam­boo patch was on fire and my ve­hi­cle and oth­er ve­hi­cles were on fire.

"No an­nounce­ment was made in the zoo. That was re­al care­less­ness and neg­li­gence on the zoo's part. If they had alert­ed the pub­lic all the ve­hi­cles would have been saved."Mc Mayo's wife Ali­cia tried leav­ing the zoo with her three chil­dren, but said the gate at­ten­dant told her she could not pass through the emer­gency ex­it and to use the turn­stile in­stead.She said there were a lot of peo­ple there and it even­tu­al­ly took a long time to get out.

"I found that was very ridicu­lous...We should be able to pass through, es­pe­cial­ly in a sit­u­a­tion like this," she said.In an in­ter­view at the scene, act­ing Deputy Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Dana Roach said two fire trucks were aug­ment­ed by a bulk wa­ter car­ri­er to bring the fire un­der con­trol.He said fire­fight­ers were even­tu­al­ly as­sist­ed by zoo per­son­nel us­ing cut­lass­es and chain­saws to clear the path for the trav­el­ling pub­lic.

A back­hoe and trucks were al­so called in to help re­move the bam­boo de­bris to en­sure no fires reignit­ed.Roach said the cause of the fire will be de­ter­mined lat­er.Mc Mayo said he want­ed to know which agency was go­ing to com­pen­sate him for his loss­es.


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