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COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- As the flames moved closer to Colorado Springs during the Waldo Canyon Fire many questioned the safety of the community. But it wasn't just the people that thousands were worried about.

"We had people from across the country, across the world that had visited the zoo before, had heard about the fires in Colorado Springs, and they were concerned," Katie Borremans, Public Relations Manager for the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, said.

Fortunately the fire never came close enough to the zoo to force them to evacuate, but what would happen if they had to?

"We hope we never have to put our emergency fire plan into action, but we do have a plan in case we would be in the path of a fire," Borremans said.

She added that they practice the plan regularly to make sure everybody knows what their role is.

"The very first step obviously is to get people out of the zoo," she said.

Borremans said the next step would be moving the animals into safe places on zoo grounds.

"We have a number of safe shelters on zoo grounds that we can move the animals to if we need to. We've got crates on standby, everything is labeled, everybody knows who goes where," she said.

Some of the options on site are the giraffe barn, the lion tunnel and the commissary.

"We've been very fortunate to have firefighters up here looking at the grounds with us on a regular basis making sure that our fire plan is ready to go and air tight, so we have a number of sites that they've looked at that we feel would be safe for the animals," Borremans said.

She said for some animals it's more dangerous to move them than it is to leave them behind in a shelter.

"Some of the animals it's incredibly stressful and incredibly dangerous to move them even in a time where there is not a crisis going on," she said. "For example our hoofstock is very susceptible to something called Capture Myopathy and it's almost like a panic attack, you know when you get in a confined space. If we were trying to load a giraffe onto a trailer they could panic and cause severe injury to themselves or even death."

She said she wants to assure they public that the zoo is prepared and the staff will do everything possible to keep the animals safe.