[MarinTeams] 10/23 SoCal Fires: As stables fill, owners urged to rely on friends, family to house animals

[Dulce Shafer]

Dear Kate,

Thanks for the horse story. It brought tears to my
eyes, I am a horse person.  Thank goodness people were
pretty well organized to start with.  You didn't say
whether you were one of the ham operators.  Hope to
see you Thursday to hear more about it. Aloha, Dulce. 




--- Kate Danaher <katedanaher at comcast.net> wrote:

> Read down to paragraph with **** re: role of Ham
> Radios in horse
> evacuation...
> 
>
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20071023-9999-bn23horses.html
> 
> Owners scramble to find safe haven for horses
> 
> As stables fill, owners urged to rely on friends,
> family to house animals
> By Elizabeth Fitzsimons,
> 
> UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
> October 23, 2007
> 
> Trailers wrapped around the Del Mar Fairgrounds
> yesterday  morning, some
> waiting as long as two hours to unload some of the
> thousands of horses
> evacuated from ranches and backyard stables
> threatened by the county
> wildfires.
> 
> But by 9:30 a.m., the fairgrounds' 2,400 stalls were
> full. Horse owners who
> didn't make it had to look elsewhere: to friends and
> family with barns or
> land, to an evacuation site in Lakeside or stables
> in San Juan Capistrano,
> Thermal and Indio.
> 
> Much of San Diego County is horse country, home to
> thoroughbred breeding
> ranches and countless backyard stables housing
> family pets. As many as
> 300,000 horses live in the county, and when people
> flee from the fires, so
> do the horses.
> 
> Volunteers with trailers and law enforcement,
> including a team of San Diego
> mounted police officers driving horse trailers, went
> in search of horses to
> rescue.
> 
> Dianna Bonny, 44, of Olivenhain towed one of the
> last trailers into the
> fairgrounds. But she still had 21 other horses she
> needed to move.
> 
> The wind was whipping ash, dust and palm fronds as
> Bonny pulled two horses
> from their trailer and into stalls. Horses in the
> row stomped their feet and
> threw back their heads. Some bared their teeth.
> 
> ³We should have started this at 4 in the morning,
> but you just don't know,²
> she said, shaking her head.
> 
> Nearby, word carried fast that the fairgrounds had
> closed.
> 
> Horse owners in Rancho Santa Fe and Olivenhain were
> looking for other
> options: calling friends with barns or even large
> yards outside the
> evacuation areas, or gathering horses into other
> paddocks and outdoor stalls
> in areas away from trees and chaparral.
> 
> At El Camino del Norte near Del Dios Highway in
> Rancho Santa Fe, which was
> ordered evacuated, about a dozen people were parked
> at a roadblock. Several
> said they were moving horses from Rancho East, a
> private stables in the
> neighborhood with about 60 horses. By midafternoon,
> only about 10 horses had
> been moved off the property. The decision was made
> to take the rest of the
> horses out of the barns and into the stables'
> outdoor pens.
> 
> Cardiff resident Gerri Minott said she had taken one
> of her horses from
> Rancho East to Ride America, a horse boarding and
> training facility in
> Carlsbad, but a race horse she owned was too
> high-strung to be moved. She
> put that horse into a Rancho East paddock.
> 
> ³Smoke just got worse and worse. We moved them out
> of the barns, where there
> was wood, into steel-pipe pens,² she said.
> 
> Geanna Schmidt moved her horse at 5:30 a.m. and then
> helped others in Rancho
> Santa Fe and Olivenhain. At 1:30 p.m. she had just
> returned from taking a
> horse to a yard in Encinitas.
> 
> ³We were kind of hoping we could get one more load,²
> she said.
> 
> At a county-operated evacuation site at the Lakeside
> Rodeo grounds, horses
> from Jamul, Lakeside and Ramona were cataloged and
> photographed. Most had
> owners that were accounted for. Others had been
> picked up wandering the
> streets in burned areas.
> 
> The grounds had room for about 300 horses.
> 
> ³Because the fire is all over the county, people are
> really scrambling,²
> said Jim White, regional director of the county's
> Department of Animal
> Services. ³We're running out of places to take
> horses.²
> 
> He asked that horse owners rely on friends and
> family, not evacuation
> centers, to help them house their animals.
> 
> Thoroughbred breeders, some with farms in the eye of
> the Witch Creek fire,
> also evacuated their animals. The Golden Eagle and
> Ballena Vista Farms
> outside Ramona, which rank among the most prominent
> facilities in the state
> for breeding and raising thoroughbreds, were
> evacuated but had escaped major
> damage.
> 
> ³We had taken an aggressive stance on fire
> prevention and it paid off,² said
> Larry Mabee who, with his mother, Betty, owns and
> operates Golden Eagle.
> 
> ³It's an island in the middle of the fire zone,²
> Mabee said late yesterday
> morning. ³No loss of buildings, no horses or people
> injured.²
> 
> On Sunday, thick smoke engulfed the countryside just
> north and east of
> Ramona along state Route 78 and flames crept over
> the hillsides. At one
> point Mabee went to check on neighboring Ballena
> Vista Farm, just across
> Route 78, but he couldn't see more than a few feet
> through the smoke. He
> later found out the farm was unscathed.
> 
> In North County, the major thoroughbred facilities
> in Bonsall ­ San Luis Rey
> Downs Training Center and Vessels Stallion Farm ­
> took in horses of all
> breeds and other animals.
> 
> ****³We have rescue volunteers manning ham radios to
> guide people in through
> the road closures,² owner Frank ³Scoop² Vessels
> said. ³Unfortunately ­ or
> fortunately ­ we've done this before, and we're
> pretty organized and trying
> to do the best we can to help our buddies.²
> 
> About 200 spaces were available yesterday afternoon
> at the Galway Downs
> Training Center in Temecula. Four years ago when the
> Cedar fire struck,
> Debbie Constantino was out of town at a horse show.
> Her three horses, taken
> from her Blossom Valley home by a friend, were freed
> in the chaos and lost
> for weeks, ending up in Granite Hills, Del Mar and
> Bonita.
> 
> This time, Constantino was prepared. She packed up
> the saddles, the feed,
> the buckets. She took a Sharpie marker and wrote her
> cell phone number on
> the horses' left front hooves.
> 
> ³I can't believe this is happening again,² she said.
> Her nerves were getting
> the best of her, and the horses sensed it.
> 
> But she and the paint horses were safe now at the
> Lakeside Rodeo grounds.
> She patted one on the thigh; in the other hand she
> held an unlighted
> Marlboro Light.
> 
> ³I've been saying my prayers and I made sure I
> grabbed my Bible,² she said.
> ³If anything happens to the house, I know I got the
> important things.²
> 
=== message truncated ===


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com