Our personal experience evacuating from the Alexander Mountain Fire
My husband and I were boating on a beautiful Fort Collins, Colorado reservoir, 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 wore ID tags 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 ID 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.
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, 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.
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.
Multiple fires occurred in our area within days of one another. Horses that were moved to one evacuation center were moved to different facilities. County fairs and other events were 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 referenced previously, the First Responders wanted READILY AVAILABLE AND VISIBLE ID TAGS 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 ID 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? Hoof painting and body paint rarely last longer than a day. One gal told me her paint job lasted a week… because she used oil-based paint. Do you have paint lying around your barn that you can grab with absolutely no notice?
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. There is a newer version with greater stability, but still measured in terms of days, not weeks or months. You can’t attach it before you go boating and count on it being there if you get rudely interrupted!
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. We were able to return home after 9 days of evacuation. Twenty-six homes and over 20 other outbuildings burned on our mountain that week. The fire damage is 1000 feet behind our home.
The two hurricanes that heavily impacted Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas resurrected my “wildfire evacuation PTSD” to some extent. Whereas people in Florida had some ability to prepare, the folks inland were caught completely off guard. Even those with time to prepare were faced with significant challenges such as major traffic jams and gas shortages. I heard a woman interviewed, and I don’t think I will ever forget what she said. “One minute I was baking cookies, and the next minute, my husband, my dog, and my house were washed away.”
For weeks after the flooding, photos and Facebook posts of missing and found horses were flooding my feed. Sadly, many horses (and other animals) died in that natural disaster. Many people died as well. The suddenness and intensity of the flooding were completely unexpected. No one inland expected the rain and flooding to impact them to the extent that it did. It isn’t possible to always be prepared in advance!
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.
MAKE A PLAN. Get SOME kind of ID. DON’T DEPEND ON FACEBOOK ALONE! 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!
