A Connecticut Cowgirl Watches

News Of San Diego Fires And Weeps

By Victoria Cummings

My brother-in-law called us from San Marcos, California, after dinner on Sunday night. It was October 21, 2007, only a couple of months after he and his wife finally bought the house they had been renting for many years.

“I just hosed down my roof, “ he told us, “There’s a wildfire in Discovery Hills behind us. We can see the red glow over the ridge.”

I could hear the panic in his voice.

We moved from San Diego to Newtown, four years ago with our two horses, my 93-year-old mother, our 12-year-old daughter, a dog and two cats. Most of our family and friends still live in the North County area where the Witch Creek Fire started, and many of them are horse-owners.

Immediately, a memory flashed of the Cedar Fire, which devastated large parts of the area right before we moved East. My friend had just bought a charming Spanish hacienda with a guesthouse and a barn in Valley Center. The fire came down on them so fast that she was left running down the road, leading her two horses with a wall of flames behind her. Out of nowhere, a stranger with a truck and horse trailer appeared like some kind of angel. He helped her get the horses inside and drove her to safety. Her entire property was burned.

There were lots of those angels working overtime during the recent San Diego fires. We’ve heard a great deal about the 500,000 people who had to be evacuated, but what about the more than 300,000 horses whom are mostly stabled in the places that the fire hit hardest? The San Diego equine population is one of the largest in this country.

I went out to my own barn to check on my horses, Silk and Siete, and tried to imagine what I would be doing if I still lived in an area that was being evacuated. During the Cedar Fire, the blaze came within ten miles of where I kept my girls. I made plans to move them to a friend’s barn down in Rancho Santa Fe, but fortunately never had to carry through on them. The day after that fire started, I actually flew to the East Coast for a job interview that eventually led to our big move here. I’ll never forget looking out of the airplane window at this enormous flaming wound running down the length of the mountain range.

Now, I marveled at how lucky we were to be here, 3000 miles away. The wind was blowing hard through the trees as I hugged Silk and worried about my friends’ fate. The rattling of the leaves made me nervous. I reminded myself that it was nothing compared to the jitters people get in California when the Santa Ana winds start blowing that hot desert air. In my old home, I knew the gusts were coming in at 30 to 60 mph.

For four days, my husband and I sat glued to our computers watching the live coverage of the fire over the Internet, tuned into San Diego TV stations. We felt the same agony that we experienced being on the West Coast during 9/11. During that tragedy, we couldn’t contact our loved ones in New York City, so all we could do was hope and pray. I feared most for one of my friends who lived along Del Dios Highway, a small enclave of rural paradise amid the housing developments along the 15 Freeway and in exclusive Rancho Santa Fe. Her family owned their home for over seventy years. She had four horses and a mother in her nineties, and they were ordering a mandatory evacuation.

“Get out now! Get out now!” was the message that was automatically broadcast on the reverse-911 calls being made all over North County. It gave me chills to think about answering the phone and hearing those words.

Two thousand horses ended up at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, which has great barns at the racetrack. I wondered how my horses would behave if they were suddenly rushed someplace unfamiliar. I knew that many people wouldn’t have had time to grab water, hay and feed. Horses can colic if they change their eating and drinking habits.

I heard reports of groups of horse-owners coming to the rescue with their trailers. Some people took two horses to safety and then weren’t permitted to return to their barns to get the rest of their beloved animals. One barn, Rancho East, where some of my friends kept their horses, were only able to move ten of the sixty horses stabled there. They had no choice but to turn loose in the paddocks the ones that were left and hope that they could fend for themselves. It was recommended that people write their cell phone numbers with a Sharpie on each horse’s front hoof.

My former vet, Dr. Steve Colburn, set up an emergency equine medical clinic at Vessels, a famous Quarter Horse racing farm in Bonsall, a town further to the north and east. I watched in horror as the fire raged through Del Dios, Rancho Santa Fe and into Del Mar. My friends own Mary’s Tack and Feed, a huge place that I always call “the ultimate horse lover’s toy store.” It appeared to be right in the path of the fire.

Across the street, at the Polo Fields between Rancho Santa Fe and Del Mar, everyone scrambled to evacuate the horses that had been moved there earlier.

Our phone rang. “They’re telling people to get out of Solana Beach!” my brother-in-law announced. I started to cry. I was reading the evacuation notices on my computer at Signonsandiego.com. They issued one for the first house we lived in about sixteen years ago. I thought of all my neighbors and friends, but there was no way to know how they were doing.

As the fire raced towards the ocean, there was no time to move anyone from the Del Mar Fairgrounds. Officials hoped that the wetlands between the Interstate 5 freeway and the beautiful Spanish style buildings would protect everyone sheltered there. The highway runs north and south along the coast.

We saw video of homes burning to the ground in neighborhoods that we had driven through daily. There were new fires threatening areas to the north and south, so most of the access highways were being cut-off. I saw the evacuation notice for Bonsall, but the owners of Vessels decided not to attempt to move the 400 horses being sheltered on their property.

One TV reporter described how his wife drove to their neighborhood grocery store and found the areas in the parking lot where the shopping carts were returned had been filled with horses tied to the railings. Horses were grazing on people’s front lawns. At one Home Depot, the parking lot was full of portable corrals. There were horses among the ten thousand people camping in Qualcomm Stadium.

Fortunately, the winds shifted, giving firefighters a chance to fly over the fires and drop water and flame retardant. The threat to all the places that we loved was lifted almost as quickly as it began. The painful, sad process of picking through the ashes would begin. Here in Connecticut, some people ask me why anyone would rebuild in a place where they know it might burn down again. I can only say that it’s their home, and they love living there.

Many families have had their roots in San Diego for as long as families in Newtown have lived in New England. With each natural disaster, they learn better ways to protect themselves.

In Ramona, one woman had only fifteen minutes warning. She took her dogs and cats, but left twenty-eight horses behind. The house, the barn, and everything burned down. All the horses are fine. They have no lead ropes or halters left, but local animal control officers gave them hay and water until she was allowed to return.

Horses have lived in the wild in California longer than people. Even if they’ve been turned into domesticated show champions, they will always have a strong survival instinct. They also show a tremendous trust in human beings. So many of the animals that were rescued followed total strangers onto trailers and stayed calm for days in places that were weird and foreign to them.

The San Diego horse community came together to help each other in a remarkable show of strength. Their efforts have just begun, and they need help. My heart goes out to the horse owners who weren’t able to save their beloved animals.

Donations can be made to the USEF Equine Disaster Relief Fund at either USEF.org or by sending checks to the United States Equestrian Federation, 4047 Iron Works Parkway, Lexington, KY 40511. More information about the fire can be found on ridingmagazine.com.