An entire German town was placed on lockdown Friday after dozens of animals – including two lions, two tigers and a jaguar – escaped from a zoo because of a storm-related flood, according to reports.

Police killed a bear after the breakout, but the big cats remained on the loose until authorities using a drone managed to corral them on the zoo’s premises in the town of Lünebach, according to The Local.

It was not immediately clear whether the felines, which broke out after their enclosures were flooded during heavy storms, had to be sedated.

Residents had been warned to stay inside their homes as authorities conduct a search operation for the animals, the UK’s Express reported.

Yannick Becker, who lives near the zoo, told CNN that “there hasn’t been a flood like this here for at least 70 years.”

He said he heard from officials that two storms had collided to cause unusually heavy rainfall.

“As far as I know, a dam broke in the Eifel Zoo, which caused the area to be flooded,” he told CNN. “That enabled multiple animals to escape.”

Owned by the Wallpott family, the Eifel Zoo in the Rhineland-Palatinate near the border with Luxembourg is home to about 400 animals from 60 species, including a Siberian tiger.

It was first established in 1965 with only dogs, donkeys and a wild boar, according to the zoo’s website, and is visited by 70,000 people each year.

Friday’s great escape comes two years after two lions broke out of their cages at a zoo in Leipzig in eastern Germany. One was shot dead and the other was forced back into its cage, according to the BBC.