(CNN) Chunks of hail the size of golf balls rained havoc on a Colorado zoo on Monday, shattering windows, damaging cars and sending animals and humans running for cover. 
 
 The massive hailstorm damaged buildings and animals habitats at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs. The zoo will be closed Tuesday while it assesses the damage, marketing director Jenny Koch said. 
 
 Five injured people were taken to a hospital and nine more were treated on the scene and released, said Brian Vaughan, public information officer and fire captain for Colorado Springs Fire Department. 
 
 A 13-year-old caped vulture named Motswari was killed in the storm along with a 4-year-old Muscovy duck known as Daisy, Koch said. A third animal -- a vulture -- was initially reported dead, but later turned out to be severely injured. 
 
 Animals and humans scrambled for cover from the sudden barrage, visitor Jesse Barkalow said. He shot video on his phone of bears running around rocks in an enclosure as the pellets of frozen rain pummeled them. 
 
 Read More ||||| COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- A powerful storm that pummeled a busy Colorado zoo with large hail on Monday injured 14 people and killed at least two animals, authorities said. About 3,400 people were at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs at the time, and the zoo estimates that as many as 400 vehicles in the parking lot were damaged. 
 
 "It was hail the size I've never seen before," Jenny Koch, Cheyenne Mountain Zoo's marketing director, told The Denver Post. "Basically chunks of ice ... It's frightening." 
 
 The zoo's website says a vulture and a duck were killed by the hail. The Denver Post reports a second vulture also died. 
 
 CBS Denver reported that medical personnel set up a triage for visitors at the entrance to the zoo. Five people were taken to the hospital with traumatic injuries after the short but intense storm passed over, according to the Colorado Springs Fire Department. Another nine people were treated at the scene. 
 
 The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo evacuated people from the zoo and they were transported by bus to Cheyenne Mountain High School. 
 
 Video posted on Facebook showed large hail pelting the zoo while bears looked for cover. 
 
 NEW VIDEO: Bears ran for cover during today's insane hail storm at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. It's unclear if the bears were hurt, but a turkey vulture and a duck reportedly died. https://cbsloc.al/2vIgcMm 📹: Bill Watson Posted by CBS Denver on Monday, August 6, 2018 
 
 The storm knocked out power to nearly 2,000 customers in the area, and heavy rain and debris forced the closure of U.S. Highway 24 west of Manitou Springs, The Colorado Springs Gazette reported. 
 
 Softball-sized hail was reported in the area, but it was smaller at the zoo, which will be closed Tuesday so employees can take care of injured animals and repair broken windows and skylights. 
 
 The Broadmoor Hotel and resort also was pounded by hail, and staff members were assessing the damage. 
 
 "It was a significant storm," said Barry Brown, the hotel's vice president of sales and marketing. 
 
 Forecasters warned that runoff from the rain could cause flooding of small creeks, roads, underpasses and low-lying areas as more storms develop along the Front Range on Monday night. ||||| A 3-year-old boy fell into an endangered gorilla's enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo on May 28, and a witness captured the scene as onlookers shouted for help. The gorilla, a 17-year-old named Harambe, was shot by zoo staff in order for rescuers to reach the boy. (Kimberley O'Connor/ViralHog) 
 
 The young boy wanted a better view of the silverback gorilla living at the Cincinnati Zoo. 
 
 On Saturday morning, the zoo housed 11 western lowland gorillas. By Saturday evening, the population of the zoo’s Gorilla World had been reduced to 10. 
 
 As he struggled to find a good vantage point, the boy, whose name has not been released, tumbled into a moat surrounding the enclosure. A 17-year-old, 400-pound silverback ape named Harambe grabbed the child, dragging him through the concrete moat. To save the boy from further harm, a staff member fatally shot the ape. 
 
 
 
 The gorilla Harambe, in an undated photo. (Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden via Getty Images) 
 
 [‘Shooting an endangered animal is worse than murder’: Grief over gorilla’s death turns to outrage] 
 
 “The gorilla could have killed him if he wanted to,” Derek Spielman, a wildlife pathologist and conservation biologist at the University of Sydney, told The Washington Post in a phone interview. 
 
 The child survived his encounter with the great ape. 
 
 In the aftermath of the event, The Washington Post reported, critics of Harambe’s shooting called for “justice” on social media. (Spielman added that, had this happened in Australia, he believes zoo officials would have attempted to tranquilize the ape first, only turning to lethal weaponry if the darts were ineffective.) 
 
 The Cincinnati Zoo defended its actions. “The Zoo security team’s quick response saved the child’s life,” said the director, Thane Maynard, in a statement on Saturday. “We are all devastated that this tragic accident resulted in the death of a critically-endangered gorilla.” 
 
 Much of the wrath of social media focused on the mother of the child for letting the 4-year-old get away. But the handling of animals in captivity came under fire as well, along with the idea of them being in captivity at all. 
 
 Harambe’s death comes at a time when zoos and circuses are overturning long-standing traditions, in part due to increased scrutiny following “Blackfish,” the 2013 documentary on the killer whale that fatally attacked trainers at SeaWorld. In what commentators have attributed to the so-called “Blackfish” effect, SeaWorld’s stock price plunged, its attendance decreased and the aquarium terminated its breeding program. In early May, elephants performed at a Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus for the last time, ending a legacy of live pachyderm entertainment that had lasted for 145 years. 
 
 Some advocates see events like “Blackfish” as signs that zoos need to rethink captivity. In March 2014, the Scientific American editorial board called for an end to captive elephant and orca whale breeding, citing the animals’ immense sizes, need for large swathes of habitat and their intelligence. 
 
 “We have to change direction, hit the brakes,” Ed Stewart, a founder of the Performing Animals Welfare Society, told the Christian Science Monitor. “We need to change the way we’re doing things.” 
 
 In the aftermath of Harambe’s death, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals opined that gorillas have “complex needs,” which zoos “cannot even begin to meet.” 
 
 [‘It could have been very bad’: Gorilla killed after boy falls into Cincinnati zoo exhibit] 
 
 “Yet again,” PETA primatologist Julia Gallucci said in a statement on Sunday, “captivity has taken an animal’s life.” 
 
 How well gorillas fare in zoological captivity is not, perhaps, so clear-cut as the issue of elephants or orcas. There have been have been accidents involving captive gorillas prior to Harambe: In 2005, a Lincoln Park zoo intern was bitten by a gorilla; in 2015, a gorilla rushed the viewing window at an Omaha zoo, finding viral fame in the fractured glass; a month later, a female gorilla died at the Melbourne Zoo after another gorilla attacked her. 
 
 But no gorilla has achieved the notoriety of Tilikum, the orca at the center of “Blackfish” who was involved with the deaths of three trainers. In fact, a captive gorilla named Jambo once protectively stood watch over a boy who had fallen into the ape exhibit at the Jersey Zoo, as the University of Salford’s Robert John Young, an animal behavior expert who studies captivity, pointed out to The Washington Post in an interview. 
 
 “Gorillas are very different from killer whales,” Young told The Post. Recreating a sufficient habitat for orcas — which can cross 60 miles in a day — would be exorbitantly expensive, he said. Gorillas, on the other hand, are in a “much more manageable situation.” Young cites the Philadelphia Zoo, which now allows its gorillas to roam through a 200-foot-long series of walkways and enclosures, as a leader in providing apes with mentally stimulating conditions. “The concept of zoos is changing quite readily.” 
 
 Still, captivity does not treat all gorillas equally. Captive gorillas frequently suffer from cardiac disease, with the National Zoo reporting in 2011 that 30 apes take heart medication. They can be emotionally distressed as well. Laurel Braitman’s book “Animal Madness” recounts the story of Tom, a gorilla sent to a new zoo because he was a genetic match with its inhabitants. There, he shed a third of his body mass after his new ape companions began to assail him. Upon encountering his old human caretakers, according to Braitman, the gorilla began to cry. 
 
 Supporters of keeping gorillas captive note that many belong to species survival programs, in which animals are bred in captivity in the hopes of reintroduction in the wild. Two dozen scimitar-horned oryx were released in Chad in May, for instance, after years of breeding in zoos. Harambe was part of the Gorilla Species Survival Plan (SSP), which was formed in 1988 to preserve a healthy genetic stock of gorillas. 
 
 “This is a huge loss for the Zoo family,” Cincinnati Zoo’s Maynard said, “and the gorilla population worldwide.” 
 
 For gorillas, the situation in the wild can be dire. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature considers the 175,000 or so western lowland gorillas to be critically endangered, facing habitat loss, hunting and the spread of the Ebola virus. 
 
 Unlike the oryx, there are no immediate plans to release captive gorillas. For captive breeding programs to be successful, the wild habitat must first be preserved. “A minority of SSP populations actually participates in reintroduction, but the majority of SSP programs, like the Gorilla SSP, exist solely to create a sustainable captive population,” the Cincinnati Zoo notes on its website. 
 
 It is very possible, Spielman said, that gorillas in the species survival program will have to remain in captivity for at least another hundred years. “Whatever zoos can do,” he said, “is dwarfed by the problems facing biological diversity.” 
 
 Though species survival programs are popularly imagined as an ark, Young argues they are more like car insurance. “You’re hoping that you’ll never need it,” he said. 
 
 “But if we do ruin the planet, at least we’ve got this insurance policy.”
– Hail the size of golf balls and softballs pummeled a Colorado zoo on Monday, leaving 14 people injured and two animals dead, including one of roughly 20 endangered vultures known to be in the US. The 13-year-old female Cape vulture, dubbed Motswari, arrived at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs from South Africa as part of a breeding program. "It's a massive loss," a conservationist tells the Washington Post, noting Motswari was in her breeding prime and the species has declined by up to 94% in three generations. A Muscovy duck was also killed, while five people were sent to the hospital, per CNN. The zoo tells CBS News that up to 400 vehicles were damaged.