MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
NPR's Richard Gonzales reports.
RICHARD GONZALES: There were probably more reporters and cameras than patrons outside the zoo this morning when officials swung open the gates for the first time since Christmas. Among the early morning visitors, Gaye Bryson(ph) of San Francisco and her young grandson.
GAYE BRYSON: I feel it's important to show my support for an institution that I really, really value, and that's why we're here.
GONZALES: Any concerns about safety?
BRYSON: None. Absolutely none.
GONZALES: What visitors won't see is the zoo's big cat exhibit, where 17-year- old Carlo Souza was killed. The exhibit remains closed as officials erect a new 19-foot glass wall. The current 12-and-half-foot barrier failed to hold the tiger. Officials are also installing a new public alert system and signs warning visitors not to taunt the animals.
MANUEL MOLLINEDO: The zoo is a safe place. And I would just like to encourage and invite everyone that lives here in San Francisco and the Bay Area to please come out again and visit the San Francisco Zoo.
GONZALES: That's the zoo director, Manuel Mollinedo. He's still unclear why Tatiana, the 350-pound tiger, escaped in the first place.
MOLLINEDO: All I know is that something happened to provoke that tiger to leap out of her exhibit. The police is investigating it. And until they can come up with some definitive answers, I probably, there would only be speculation on my part at this point.
GONZALES: Rory Little, a professor at UC Hastings College of Law, says legal action is predictable, but so many of the facts of the incident are still unknown. And he says, in a civil trial, it may not matter whether the victims provoked the tiger.
RORY LITTLE: You know, most people don't expect the animals to be able to escape their enclosures. Even if these kids did taunt the tiger, I think it's perfectly clear that it never occurred to them that the tiger would then escape and chase them down and attack them.
GONZALES: Richard Gonzales, NPR News, San Francisco.