As the floodwaters receded on Sunday morning, surreal scenes were revealed in the capital: a bear perched on a second-story windowsill, a crocodile lurking next to cars on a washed-out road and a hippopotamus grazing from a tree.

The police fanned out to tranquilize or, citing security concerns, kill the escaped animals. On Monday, Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili announced that the police had accounted for all the animals that posed a threat to humans. After the tiger attack on Wednesday, he apologized, saying he had been misled by officials at the zoo, and said patrols would continue.

Levan Butkhuzi, the editor in chief of National Geographic Georgia and a close friend of the zoo director, Zurab Gurielidze, said he rushed to the scene at 2 a.m. and said the zoo looked as if it had been hit “by a tsunami.” The zoo was covered by more than 12 feet of water, he said, and Mr. Gurielidze was on the second story of a building, trapped by the floodwaters.

In the following days, much of the stress for tallying the missing animals and coordinating the search has fallen on the shoulders of Mr. Gurielidze, who on Wednesday announced that he was responsible for telling the police that all the animals were accounted for.

“He had to coordinate all this, a guy who barely survived, and when he saw that his staff had died in front of his eyes, and the animals had died in front of his eyes, and he was obliged to coordinate everything,” Mr. Butkhuzi said in a telephone interview. “That’s really beyond the capacity of any person.”

Local news outlets reported Wednesday that an African penguin had appeared on Georgia’s border with Azerbaijan, apparently having swum more than 30 miles downstream from the zoo. Ms. Sharashidze said that zoo workers had searched for the penguin but had not been able to find it.

Since Sunday, hundreds of residents have volunteered to help dig the city out from under the mud and debris left by the flood. “I have not seen a response from civil society like this here for many years,” said Mr. Shatirishvili, the literary critic.