Tbilisi City Hall presents sculpture sketches of escaped hippo from deadly 2015 flood
The photo reflecting a zoo-escaped hippopotamus Begi walking in central Tbilisi street after flood was shared thousands of people worldwide. Photo: 1TV.
Tweet 
Share
Tbilisi City Hall has presented sketches earlier today in Mziuri Park for a sculpture of the hippopotamus Begi, who escaped the zoo during the June 13 deadly flood in Tbilisi in 2015.
The photo has become one of the symbols of the tragic day.
One of the sketches will be selected by a special commission in the coming months and the monument will be placed near Tbilisi Zoo in Vake district, from where a number of animals escaped during the disaster.
One of the sketches. Photo: 1TV.
The video and photo reflecting Begi walking in the mud of the flooded central streets of Tbilisi went viral during the tragic days, with thousands of people sharing it.
English man Adrian Scoffham, who then lived in Tbilisi, came up with the idea to establish the Tbilisi Hippo Fund. The Fund provided financial assistance all around the world to affected people as well as Tbilisi Zoo, which lost about half of its animals in the deadly flood.
Tbilisi City Hall opened the competition for sketches on April 3, 2019.
A sketch: Photo: 1TV.
14 sketches have been submitted so far.
Today, four years have passed since the Georgian capital of Tbilisi was hit by a deadly flash flood, which turned out to be the city’s worst human and infrastructural disaster in decades, claiming 21 lives, with the remains of two still missing.