Cleanup begins at Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center after last week's winter storm

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (FOX 10) - It's a facility that has never seen a winter storm quite like this one.

And while most of the snow is now gone at the Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center, the damage is still there.

"It started snowing in the evening and I'm thinking, 'well, it's pretty and it'll be gone by morning' and I woke up in the morning and it was almost a foot of snow and everything was just white," Linda Searles said. "I was born and raised here and I've never seen anything like that here."

Cleanup crews, working hard this morning, to repair the downed trees and collapsed animal enclosures.

"The heavy snow on the trees, it was a wet snow and it broke limbs," Searles said. "We have some of these trees that are 25 or 30 years old and then they broke and fell down on top of the roofs of the enclosures."

Crews predict it will take about two weeks to get the facility back in good shape, however, the main concern is the stress this process puts on the animals.

"They're not happy about being moved and they're not happy about the noise," Searles said. "We had to move some out of their normal home and put them in other places until we can get the repairs done."

The facility predicts the cost of the clean up will be at least $50,000.

"We're just going to have to go through section by section and not get all spread out, so we'll just work our way around the 10 acres and get it all cleaned up," Searles said.

Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center
https://www.southwestwildlife.org/