Chester Zoo boss Jamie Christon says the aspiration is to reopen the fire-ravaged Monsoon Forest habitat in the summer of next year.
Sadly, December’s devastating blaze killed smaller species like frogs, fish and stick insects but zoo staff were able to save mammals including Sumatran orangutans and gibbons and macaque monkeys.
Mr Christon, who is chief operating officer, told an audience at Storyhouse the restoration work would go on for months but the aim was to reopen in the summer of 2020.
Recalling the day of the fire, sparked by an electrical fault, he said: “On 15th December at 11.28am, I got a phone call to say the zoo was on fire. I live in Hoole . You could see not only the smoke but the flames from the fire from my bedroom window, a couple of miles away.
“Never got there as fast in my life and I spent the day dealing with this devastating fire in a building that was, and is, the jewel in the crown of the zoo in my opinion. It’s part of the Islands, part of the forty-odd million pound development, we opened back in 2015.
“And to see something going up in flames just a couple of years after building it was mortifying for me and the team and our members and our visitors.”
Mr Christon remembered having to give endless interviews to the world’s media with the ‘sorry-looking’ building in the background while trying to keep staff motivated. But amid the gloom, there were crumbs of comfort such as social media feedback showing how positive the public felt about the zoo in its hour of need.
“Lots of opportunities came out of the fire,” he said.
“We were inundated. Our telephone system went down for a short period of time. People were trying to get in touch with us saying they wanted to donate something to the zoo, they wanted to be able to come and help, they wanted to clean up. They wanted to take animals home to their bedrooms and outhouses!
“And as a result we set up a Just Giving page at the zoo that day.”
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Monies raised so far amount to a staggering £250,000-plus which will go towards a conservation project with a link back to some of the species within Monsoon Forest. There have been no fewer than 8,000 donors with some private gifts of ‘considerable’ sums and many others of £5 or £10.
Talking about what happens next, Jamie continued: “We are about to start to take the roof trusses off the building, the dome-like structures on there and they will be taken off one at a time and taken away and repaired and repainted and shot blasted before they are put back in place.
“That’s going to take a considerable number of months for that to happen before we then replace the roof and then we start the work inside the building and start putting the animals back in there and replanting that building. We are looking, our aspiration is to reopen the building in summer of next year.”
