Lower Saxony [Germany], December 30: Large portions of the premises of the Serengeti Park zoo and outdoor leisure park in northern Germany were totally submerged on Thursday, as the state premier visited to tour the stricken facilities.
Water had entered some of the animal enclosures, a spokeswoman for the zoo said, adding that staff and emergency workers were trying to create makeshift dams to protect some other enclosures.
The zoo moved more than 200 monkeys - along with some lemurs, prairie dogs and meerkats - relocating them to another, drier location on site.
The zoo in Lower Saxony, north of Hanover, is near the Meisse River, which burst its banks after several days of heavy rains over the Christmas holidays that have affected many parts of the country.
The flooding has hit during the park's winter off-season, when it is not open to customers.
The situation was particularly bad on Thursday at an area of the leisure facility called the Masai Mara Lodges, a section that houses its antelopes and giraffes, as well as some huts for guests who wish to stay overnight.
Water had already entered the stables there, too, but for now the park was not planning to move the huge animals.
"For the moment the water's still below the tops of their hooves, we can soak that up with straw," spokeswoman Asta Knoth told the dpa news agency.
She said that these larger mammals would only be relocated if the situation deteriorates considerably.
"You have to think very carefully before moving a giraffe," she said. "It's not without its dangers."
The park had to temporarily cut off electricity for the entire site and switch to emergency generators to heat the stables and prepare drinking water.
The state premier of Lower Saxony, Stephan Weil of the Social Democrats (SPD), visited the site on Thursday along with the party's chairman at the national level, Lars Klingbeil, to see the situation for themselves.
The northern German and more predominantly protestant region around Hamburg, Hanover, Bremen and Lower Saxony is the SPD's heartland, where it tends to fare best in elections, and where both the last SPD chancellors, Olaf Scholz and Gerhard Schroder, made names for themselves before moving to national politics.
In the small villages nearby, several hundred people have had to leave their homes because of the flooding.
In Lower Saxony as a whole, warnings are in place for high water levels on several rivers - including the Weser, the Aller, the Leine and the Oker.
Days of heavy rains led to flooding across much of Germany. Although the precipitation has since stopped, in some cases excess water is still running off into rivers and flowing downstream, leading to continued flood risks even as the storm warnings have ebbed.
Source: Times of Oman
