Zoo workers safely recovered two seals and a polar bear that had managed to escape their enclosures but Jeb and a dozen or so other animals from the zoo’s barnyard exhibit — including other goats, sheep and a miniature donkey — drowned.  “That was a tough loss,” said Jago, one of several employees who spent Wednesday afternoon grieving and regrouping after the exhausting search that began before dawn.  The storm dumped up to 10 inches of rain on the northeastern Minnesota city, which sits on a steep rocky hillside that leads down to Lake Superior.  There were no immediate reports of serious injuries, though an 8-year-old boy was swept about six blocks through a culvert in Duluth. The boy suffered some scrapes and bruises but was fine, St. Louis County Undersheriff Dave Phillips said, calling it a “miracle out of this whole disaster.”  Gov. Mark Dayton declared a state of emergency Wednesday and authorized the National Guard to help the city of 86,000 cope with extensive damage. There were multiple reports of streets having been washed out, and parts of the zoo remain submerged Wednesday hours after the rain stopped.  Furniture from exhibits lay scattered about the zoo and water marks showed flooding that reached as high as 14 feet off the ground in places, said Peter Pruett, the zoo’s director of animal management.  Pruett’s day began with a 3 a.m. phone call that someone had spotted a seal on a street near the zoo. He went to the scene, and found the harbor seal, Feisty, in the street, corralled by three police cars.  “She was right by the storm drain, so she had water all around her,” he said. Pruett got a piece of plywood and nudged Feisty along, about a half a block, back to the zoo.  As he was walking with Feisty, he knew her escape could mean trouble, “because if the seal’s out, the polar bear very well could be out too,” he said.  He rounded up zoo employees, who answered the call and began searching for animals in the darkness. One employee found the lions and tigers were still in their exhibits, which was a relief. But Berlin, the polar bear, wasn’t in sight.  “A dangerous animal is out and it’s the middle of the night, and you cross your fingers and you pray to whomever you want to pray to that she’s still there and not terrorizing some other place,” said Pruett.  Thankfully, a zookeeper spotted the bear at about 5 a.m. atop the rock wall that encloses her exhibit. The zoo vet and a police officer approached her in a squad car, enabling the vet to safely shoot her with a tranquilizer gun.  “Once we got that first visual on her, I basically let out a big sigh of relief. I knew she was going to be safe,” said Pruett. He said Berlin was groggy and dirty from her ordeal a few hours later, but otherwise OK.
DULUTH, Minn. — Residents evacuated their homes and animals escaped from their pens at a zoo as floods fed by a steady torrential downpour struck a city in northeastern Minnesota, officials said Wednesday.