Driving from her East San Diego County home to her horse in Lakeside on Sun. Oct. 21, California Riding Magazine’s owner Cheryl Erpelding noticed a firefighting helicopter in the distance, and later on, some smoke.
“I took note, but did not become concerned at first,” she recalls. “Living in San Diego County’s backcountry for the last 18 years, fires are a regular occurrence.” After riding, however, she canceled plans to watch friends at a show in favor of heading home to monitor the fire.
The Santa Ana winds blew their forceful, hot and dreaded breath through land parched from another dry season. By the time Erpelding got home and turned on the news, she knew this fire was no regular occurrence. The Cedar fires of 2003 were about to be displaced as the worst wildfires in California history.
Horse-dense San Diego County was the hardest hit, but communities from as far north as Simi Valley and south to the Mexican border were hit by a batch of 20 blazes that raged erratically from Sunday on through to Wed. Oct. 24. By then the winds had abated and most of the fires were out or relatively under control. Time Magazine estimates that a total of 400,000 acres and 2,000 homes were destroyed and that one million people were temporarily evacuated, which exceeds the number of people displaced after Hurricane Katrina.
Emerging from the devastation is the good news that relatively few horses were killed, injured or lost. Numbers in these areas are difficult to determine, but general reports from those on the front lines and in government offices reflect a remarkably small number of fire-related equine deaths or severe injuries. Lost horses were a big story after the 2003 fires, but sources this time around report few such cases.
Horse owners’ preparedness, prompted by bad past experiences, is credited for the minimal losses.

Proud of Everyone
Except for a few neighbors who did not heed the Fire Department’s mandatory evacuation, fire veteran Stephanie Abronson says, “I am so proud of everyone!” The author of What Do I Do With My Horse In the Case of a Fire, Flood or Earthquake, (available for free download at www.etinational.org). Abronson was the epitome of prepared. “I have a 10,000 gallon water tank and a swimming pool with a pump,” says the veteran of Malibu’s 1993 and 1996 blazes, but none of those home-defense weapons were deployed before she got her horses away from her threatened property in the Malibu area’s Monte Nido.
Preparedness was coupled with the horse community’s undisputed willingness to pull together. From San Diego to Simi Valley, stories of horse people stepping up to help abound: Trailers lined up at fire department barricades waiting their turn to haul their own, a friend’s, and often a stranger’s horse to safety: volunteers flooding equine evacuation centers armed with hay, water and time to care for displaced horses: and, once the fires were controlled, donations and offers of assistance in every imaginable form.
San Diego County’s Del Mar Fairgrounds went from show host to temporary home for 2,400 evacuated horses within approximately 12 hours. “We got the call Sunday night and we started receiving people with horse trailers on Monday morning,” explains the Fairgrounds equestrian manager, Kenny Baker, who was widely lauded for his efforts and those of his staff. “At 8 or 9 p.m., we had to stop receiving trailers because we were full.”
The fire’s arrival between weeks one and two of the Del Mar Fall Festival was a blessing, as there was hay on site for the competition. Although the air was smokey and sooty, conditions under Baker and his staff’s control were well organized. As the trailers arrived, drivers were assigned a barn row to deliver their charges to. Volunteers gave drivers forms to fill out with their horses’ identifying details. Each stall door had a sheet attached on which notes were made regarding when the horse had been watered and fed. “That way we knew if people were taking care of their own horses or if we and the volunteers needed to do it,” Baker explains. The last two evacuated horses were slated to leave the Fairgrounds to their owners’ care on Nov. 5.

Chalking It Up To Experience
“A couple of months ago we had a meeting about this exact thing,” relays Baker, who was working elsewhere during the 2003 Cedar Fire. “Staff who were here during those fires had a lot of great ideas and we learned some things this time around.” Fairgrounds preparations included a stock of buckets, rakes, shovels and other basic equipment. “Heaven forbid there’s a next time, but if so, I’ll have chalk on hand,” he says. “The surface of the stall doors here is like a chalkboard. Having chalk would give us a good back up system for tracking information on each horse.”
Rumors were more threatening than flames at the Fairgrounds, Baker reports. “We filled the Del Mar Horsepark’s 400 stalls first, then people began saying that the Horsepark was being evacuated. It was my understanding that we were always safe at both places, but we had people coming to the Fairgrounds, saying ‘Oh, we had to leave the Horsepark.’ The public would look at the smoke and make their own decisions.”
Not far away at Seabreeze Farms in Carmel Valley, manager Margaret Bennett began the week taking in evacuated horses, then quickly switched gears to evacuate the boarding and training facility’s 80 equine residents, a number that jumped to 90 including those she’d taken in. “I’ve always had a plan, but I was still amazed with how well it went,” she says.
Her own staff was the backbone of the effort, with maintenance crew loading trucks that responded promptly from Stateside Farms Transport company. Halters were marked with each horse’s owner’s info, and one phone call activated a team who went to the Fairgrounds to care for the Seabreeze horses there.
Horses that didn’t load promptly were returned quickly to their stalls. According to Bennett’s plan, they would get a second chance if and when time allowed. All the horses are safely returned to Seabreeze now and, other than the mess of soot, the beautiful property and its mostly metal structures escaped damage. “Every time something like this happens, you learn a lot,” Bennett says. “This time I learned a lot about human nature. My people were amazing. It’s all about having really good people.”

Exit Strategies
Preparedness comes in many forms. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals/LA’s president Madeline Bernstein points out that a backyard horse’s predicament in a fire is much different than that of a horse boarded at a large public facility. “Usually when people are home with their animals and get the evacuation notice, they take their animals with them. At that point, there is usually time to call for assistance. If there isn’t enough time, then typically owners will call the Fire Department’s command center and let them know they have horses they couldn’t evacuate. The command center coordinates the efforts of all the other agencies, so every body is dispersed in an organized way.”
At a big boarding stable, the number of horses usually exceeds the number of trailers by a big margin. Although there are many variables, Bernstein says the best solution is often to set the horses loose. (Other organizations discourage this in favor of leaving horses in a corral with unlocked gates.) “There have been instances where that was the way to save all the horses at the same time,” she notes. Hopefully, they remember their herd instincts, stick together and return to their home when the fires abate.
Implanted microchips with health data and owner ID are invaluable in such scenarios. Stephanie Abronson was thrilled to have 80 horse owners turn up for a microchipping clinic in early November in Topanga.
SPCA/LA’s Disaster Animal Rescue Team evacuated six horses in the Los Angeles area, then went to help in San Diego. The DART team is well known for dramatic rescues of equines and other animals, but it was the LA County Animal Care and Control Department’s 120-member Equine Response Team that saw the most action in Los Angeles. A unique joint venture between the County and volunteers, the Equine Response Team consists of volunteers certified at three levels of expertise.
Michelle Roache, of Animal Care and Control, estimates that the Team evacuated between 160 and 200 horses to the Pierce College’s equestrian center, and another 40 or 50 to an evacuation site in Antelope Valley. “It’s probably safe to say that there were about 500 horses that needed to be evacuated in our area.” No equine fatalities were reported to her department.
“We’ve seen a big improvement in preparedness,” says Mary Lukins, the LA County staffer who administers the Equine Response Team. “That was true of everybody, not just horse owners.” Speaking from hands-on experience in the Topanga/Malibu area, Lukins says, “It seemed like there was a better response in terms of getting horses moved out in a timely way, and horses having halters with identifying information.”
The Team was established five or six years ago, largely in response to the mid-90s Malibu fires. Its 73-page training handbook reflects the big commitment its members make to be part of the team. October’s blazes marked the first time ERT squads were dispersed in two directions: Malibu and Santa Clarita. “It was also difficult because one third of my volunteers were impacted: they were in evacuation zones themselves,” Lukins reports. “That meant the people that could help put in twice the hours.”

Information Overload
Just a few days after the arson-started Santiago fire in Orange County finally gave up the ghost, about 50 equestrians gathered for a fire debriefing on Nov. 12. The area’s local Fire Department Captain “congratulated everyone and gave us kind of a nice pat on the back,” reports Sally Wooldridge, founder of the South Orange County Equestrian Group. Local horse owners, led by ETI Corral 357/Saddleback Canyon Riders, had made great strides in preparation over the last few years. A 12-page evacuation plan, with extensive phone trees and emergency service phone numbers, was already in place this past spring.
Better communications topped the to-do list of those attending the debriefing. Wooldridge, confined to a wheelchair while recovering from ankle surgery, found herself in a unique position to evaluate the current system, or lack thereof, for managing information. With her own horse safely evacuated to her daughter’s stable in Los Angeles, Wooldridge, who lives in Trabuco Canyon, sent out e-mail blasts asking for updates on where help was needed and where it was available. “We got responses from people in Orange Park Acres, Irvine, Laguna Hills, etc.: We had offers to transport or stable horses, and cross posts of information. It was tremendous, but it became clear we needed better coordinated communication,” she reflects.
“On Monday, I was told the Orange County Fairgrounds was full, then someone e-mailed that it wasn’t full: that if you took your horses to Gate 5, they’d let you in. But another e-mail said they weren’t letting you in there.”
The hope, Wooldridge continues, is to establish a system for collating the latest updates from the Fire, Animal Control, Sheriffs and other departments and volunteer groups and getting the news out to the equestrian community. In the end, Wooldridge says she and her fellow riders in the OC’s ravaged canyons relied on an Orange County Register weblog updated by a reporter that specialized in that area.
The Fire Captain at the debriefing noted the fire-related death of one horse, which was assumed to have resulted from a heart attack. In general, the community’s horses are OK and back in their owners’ care, says Wooldridge. “We’re just a little short of housing for them.”
The fires, she adds, were a big blow to a county already hard pressed for space to ride and keep horses.

Lessons Of the Past
Previous fires motivated many horse owners to educate themselves about disaster preparedness. “After the Cedar fires, we had a lot of community groups request training,” notes Lt. Daniel DeSousa of San Diego County’s Department of Animal Services. “One prepared person can save the lives of a lot of animals and people.”
“If you have a horse, have a trailer,” is the first point made in the DAS’ educational presentations. “And, don’t make the time your horse loads for the first time when he has fire nipping his heels,” DeSousa says. Equally important: “When you see smoke, get out! Best case scenario, it’s a good training tool.”
Throughout the week, San Diego’s Department of Animal Services worked closely with the San Diego Humane Society’s Animal Rescue Reserves, a group of volunteers trained to handle animals in a disaster. “We can’t let our average citizens go behind the fireline,” DeSousa says of the value of such volunteer groups.
Although it appears that few equine lives were lost, the opposite is true for stables and other horse related structures and equipment. Benefits of all sizes are popping up daily to help horse owners who are just now rebuilding their lives and businesses. The USEF’s Equine Disaster Fund (www.usef.org) and ETI’s Wildfire Fund (www.etinational.org) are among the bigger efforts. For more opportunities to help fire victims and many personal fire accounts from our readers, visit www.ridingmagazine.com.