Cause of London Zoo fire remains unknown ahead of annual stocktake
As the yearly stocktake gets underway at the London Zoo, the cause of a fire which devastated the zoo just before Christmas 2017 is still unknown.
70 firefighters were deployed to tackle the fire, which left nine people injured and also killed four meerkats and an aardvark on the 23rd December.
As such, the annual stocktake of the 19,000 animals was delayed by over a month.
Speaking about the fire, Mark Haben – the zoo manager – was very frank in his response, but claimed that it was “early days, we don’t know the cause of the fire”. An investigation is ongoing.
Haben did stress though that the incident had brought all the staff members at the zoo together ahead of preparation for the new breeding season.
The zoo formally reopened a day later on Christmas Eve, however the stocktake – which was pencilled in the diary to take place on the 2nd January – was pushed back in order to “get more staff involved” and to give the zoo more time to plan.
