My husband and I were boating on a beautiful Fort Collins, Colorado reservoir five days ago. We were tucked into a cove, enjoying perfect temperatures and a light breeze. Because we were surrounded by mountains, we were blissfully unaware of the plume of smoke that was rising from the direction of our mountain home. That is, until the neighbors who were tending our horses called to tell us that our mountain was on a mandatory evacuation order because of the outbreak of the Alexander Mountain Fire.
We raced back to the dock and encountered our first view of the smoke. Alan unhooked the truck from the boat trailer while I settled the dogs in the motorhome and asked our next-door camping neighbors to keep an eye on them. We headed for home as our hearts were pounding in our chests.
When we rounded the bend of the reservoir and saw that plume of smoke, I can’t describe my thoughts and feelings knowing that I had ensured that my horses were readily identifiable. We live on a MOUNTAIN. Cliffs and hazards are everywhere. I can’t imagine turning them loose to run from a fire. But it was comforting to know that if they were lost, injured, or even killed, they still wore identification and I would KNOW WHAT HAPPENED to them. I wouldn’t be haunting Facebook to try and get my horses back.
I didn’t put the tags in before we left to camp and boat for 4 days in anticipation of a fire. How do you ANTICIPATE when that is going to happen? They wear ID tags all the time.
The traffic was HORRIBLE. The ONLY road that provided direct access to our residence was blocked. When we finally reached the checkpoint, we had to PROVE that we had a legitimate reason to pass. We cleared the checkpoint and proceeded to race towards home. The Alexander Mountain Fire was burning north of Highway 34… our only direct route home. It was a 45-minute trip.
When we first got notification of a fire on our mountain 5 days ago, there was only ONE fire. Now there are THREE that are still very threatening and a couple more they have been able to squelch. Sadly, the Stone Mountain and Quarry fires were caused by humans… The origin of the Alexander Mountain Fire is still unknown.
A terrifying sight
All of the way up the canyon we could see the plume of black, billowing smoke. It is two miles up our access road to a “T”. We turn right and drive another 3/4 of a mile to our home. This was the view as we approached our home.
We rolled into the driveway. Alan rapidly hooked up the trailer while I grabbed the halters. We got the horses loaded and ran to the house for a bag of medications, the quilt I made for my parents’ 50th anniversary that incorporated my mother’s wedding dress, and a duffle bag full of ID-MyHorse tags. This was our last view of our home as we left.
DO YOU HAVE A PLAN???
After the Marshall Fire of a few years ago burned hundreds of homes in a matter of hours and resulted in hundreds of evacuated animals, the Jefferson County Fairgrounds manager and several other First Responder organizations held a meeting. They each described their perspective of the chaos and confusion that occurred as people had NO TIME to evacuate and many had NO PLAN as to how to do it. I wrote about that meeting here…https://id-myhorse.com/2022/06/08/disaster-emergency-plan/
They BEGGED the attendees to HAVE A PLAN. Make SURE your horses know how to load. Make SURE that if you don’t have a trailer, you have a PLAN as to who will come to your rescue. If you have a trailer, make SURE it is safe… are the tires good? The floor?
During the Alexander Mountain Fire evacuation this week, a willing volunteer loaded two horses into her trailer and headed for the collection point. Sadly, the floor of her trailer had rotted and the horses fell through. They ended up getting surgery at Colorado State Veterinary School instead of heading to the large animal collection point. The Quarry Fire is currently burning in Jefferson County. I wonder how many people took their advice to heart and actually MADE A PLAN?
PREPARE IN ADVANCE!
Whenever I talk to people about having ID already on their horse, I invariably hear that they plan on writing on hooves or painting a phone number on the body. We got our horses off the mountain 45 minutes before they closed the road to horse trailers. We were within a WHISPER of having our non-horsey neighbors turn our horses loose if we couldn’t get there. They are quite capable of feeding them and watching for signs of illness, but to expect them to paint hooves or body? That is not going to happen.
We barely made it back to get them… were we supposed to take time at that point to paint hooves or the body? Not possible. We took almost nothing from our home except the aforementioned items. If we thought we had any extra time at that moment, we would have been gathering up legal papers and not painting hooves.
I have received significant feedback from people as to how long body or hoof painting lasts… and it isn’t long. We are now on Day Six of this crisis. As fires continued to erupt, horses that were moved to one evacuation center were moved to different facilities. County fairs and other events are competing for space. Many of those horses were dropped off at the facility by someone who didn’t own them or know anything about them. As repeatedly stated in the Emergency Preparedness Clinic I previously referenced, the First Responders really wanted READILY AVAILABLE AND VISIBLE ID ALREADY ON THE HORSE.
Not microchips… there are two different scanners, multiple registries, and absolutely no time to be messing around with something like that. Microchips have real value in certain situations, but this is not one of them. A local resident who met me at a restaurant purchased 25 tags for her barn. We discussed microchips. Her horse is chipped but she acknowledged that she hasn’t filled out the information and sent it in.
She’s a great horse mom, proactive and tuned in. I think she realizes, as I do, that microchips are great and always a good thing to have. However, they are not the best proactive measure for where we live and how we use our horses. We don’t have to prove that the elite horse we are competing on is truly the horse we entered. We just have to be connected to our horse after an emergency event. IDENTIFICATION ON THE HORSE is the easiest way to accomplish that.
A 3 by 5 index card with your horse’s information on it is great, but will it transfer WITH your horse every time your horse gets moved from one stall to another or one facility to another?
Fetlock bands require 32 pounds of pressure to break… more torque than I want to put on my horse’s delicate fetlock joint. They will melt in a fire, burning that very same delicate fetlock area. I have been told that Manestays don’t last for more than a couple of days. It’s like clipping a ballpoint pen into your horse’s mane… not terribly permanent.
Another option besides microchips, fetlock bands, broodmare collars, or last-minute scribbling on hooves
My horses wear a tag that I have created and modified based on input from Firefighters. It is leather, so it won’t burn. The current version of this tag was developed in conjunction with Arizona Foothills 911 which is a grassroots organization dedicated to assisting horse people deal with the fires that burn in Arizona every year.
The First Responders had two requests. They wanted the universally recognized Red Cross symbol which alerts First Responders that it is critical information. Additionally, they suggested reflective strips just like what is on their uniforms to aid in visibility at night or in smoky conditions.
There is an insert inside that provides room for a significant amount of information. Is your horse allergic to something? Does it have Cushing’s Disease or some other disorder? Would you like room for more than just one phone number? Do you have a veterinarian you want notified in case treatment is needed?
The insert is wrapped in multiple layers of plastic and then reinserted into a secure leather pouch. These tags have stayed on our horses for months at a time. When the braid gets messy, I rebraid it. Here is a video of how I braid it into the mane.
Prepare for the worst and hope for the best
I always wondered if I would need the tag myself, and yet I fervently hoped that I would not. This has been a horrible week. Our home is right on the perimeter of the fire line. As of this writing, at least 25 homes and 20 outbuildings have been lost due north of us and the fire is still actively burning. Literally as I was composing this post I received a text update… 9668 acres and 32% contained. That is a HUGE jump from the 5% contained it was this morning.
We are listening to the Emergency scanner and yesterday there was chatter about someone wanting to go up to get their livestock… FOUR days after the fire erupted. The response yesterday was, “We don’t need a horse trailer on our only access road at this point. Run him off and if need be, we’ll get our personnel up there with a trailer later.” The livestock was collected today, but I don’t know if it was Animal Control Officers or the livestock owners. It required shutting down our access road so that the trailers could go down without encountering any vehicles going up. That interferes with firefighting operations!
As stated in the blog about the Emergency Preparedness Clinic, it is OUR RESPONSIBILITY as HORSE OWNERS to HAVE A PLAN. It is NOT the responsibility of Animal Control or First Responders to rescue our animals. There is no question that even if you HAVE a plan, there will be variables out of your control. But to NOT have a plan and to depend on ANYONE ELSE to take responsibility is foolish.
Will I end up watching our home burn?
The power was cut on the mountain several days ago. We have a generator still running our security cameras, so I have been able to see the smoke and flames around our home. At any given moment when I check on the cameras, I am scared to death that I might be watching our home burn before my eyes. But at the VERY LEAST, I know that my horses, my dogs, and my husband and I are safe. WE HAD A PLAN.
Alan and I are far more fortunate than most. We have a home in Arizona where we can land if need be. We are in our own motorhome and our horses and dogs are with us. We are at the Loveland residence of a fellow Storm Mountain resident, although their RV is just a weekend retreat. It’s hot, we’re on 30 amps with a faulty air conditioner and trying to keep cool, but it’s all good. They previously had horses and have provided us with a beautiful 2-stall barn and cross-fenced pasture. It’s all good.
We monitor the Alexander Mountain fire using the NASA heat map, inciweb, the WatchDuty app, and the Larimer County Emergency Scanner. You will get a snippet of understanding from the photos and videos below of what we are enduring. But thank the Lord that worrying about the safety and location of our animals is NOT part of our stress.
My family and friends frequently inquire about how I am holding up. I told one friend 2 days ago that I thought I was doing okay. I was wrong… Around 11 AM when we left the reservoir, Alan drove the coach to our new location and I headed to the stable to get the horses. As I rounded the curve towards the barn, I saw my gelding, Kadeen, in his run. I lost it. I loaded the horses and headed to our new landing spot in Loveland. As my hostess Judy walked towards the truck to greet me, I lost it.
Alan and I don’t count on tag sales to eat. I didn’t grab a duffle bag full of tags so that we could generate some income. I thought perhaps they might be needed as these fires continued to erupt. I continue to push this because my animals mean the world to me. I pursued a career in veterinary medicine because ALL animals are important to me.
I get incredibly frustrated when I see, on a daily basis, someone using Facebook to get their horses home, or someone TRYING to find out where loose horses belong. My dogs wear collars with their names and my mobile number embroidered on their collar. I care as much about my horses as I care about my dogs.
MAKE A PLAN. Get SOME kind of ID. Have well-handled horses and solid, safe equipment. You will have plenty of time to fall apart after the fact… be prepared to READY, SET, GO!
www.id-myhorse.com
Coming down the mountain as emergency personnel go up.Our view as we headed back to Fort Collins after grabbing the horses on the first day of the fire.Posted on our community Facebook group right after we got off the mountain.The heat map the day of this writingOne of MANY security camera photos I posted for my neighborsThe roughest night, watching the fire burn hotWednesday night when the camera showed so much fire activity.
very good portrayal of what it can be like in a disaster.