Monday, October 23, 2017

Saving Horses From the Northern California Wildfires

Thehorse.com - Full Article

By Clair Thunes, PhD Oct 17, 2017

Sunday, Oct. 8, Santa Rosa Junior College animal science instructor Amy Housman did something unusual for her: She put her phone on “Do Not Disturb” to enjoy a quiet evening away from her electronics.

“When I turned it on Monday morning, I had 15 texts that read from, ‘Are you okay?’ to ‘I’m out!’ ‘Hope you are up and aware.’ And, finally, one that simply said, ‘Fire,’” she says. “I walked to the front door, looked outside, and it looked like the eastern horizon was on fire. All of it.”

Then came the text that said: “We’re evacuating the barn.”

“I threw on my clothes and ran,” she recalls. “Driving to the barn was a blur, I couldn’t make a phone call, there was no internet, and the radio was saying Kmart was on fire. The only thing that made sense to my sleep-logged brain was terrorism. How could there be fire to the east and west of me? At that point, I realized I had no idea what was on fire, how I could get to the barn, and that I had also left my cat and house with no idea if they were in danger.”

On the morning of Oct. 9, the Tubbs fire spread quickly through Santa Rosa in Sonoma County, California, and had already devastated homes, reportedly traveling 12 miles in its first three hours. By day’s end hundreds of homes and businesses in the city would be destroyed and tens of thousands of people evacuated. As of Oct. 12, this fire alone had burned an estimated 2,834 homes and firefighters had it less than 40% contained...

Read more here:
http://www.thehorse.com/articles/39807/saving-horses-from-the-northern-california-wildfires

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