The heavy rains from El Nino resulted in a lush grass cover on the west coast. As the
grasses dry over summer, the fire danger will be acute. Here are some tips to help horse
owners prepare for and deal with the danger of fire.
1. Take photographs of your horses and prepare written descriptions of each of them.
Put these in a safe place such as a bank safe deposit box, away from where the horses are
kept, so that you can provide identification information to animal control personnel
should your horses become lost or separated from you in a major fire.
2. Place an identification tag on the horse itself with the horse’s name, your
name, address and phone number. Cattle ear tags can be secured around the horse’s
neck and the information written with an indelible ink pen, or write the information on a
piece of duct tape and place it on the halter.
3. Make sure that all your horse transporting equipment is well maintained and ready
to be used on a moment’s notice and be sure your horses are well schooled in
trailer and/or van loading.
4. You should have a halter and lead rope readily available for every horse.
There won’t be time for a return trip.
5. Plan for an alternate exit on foot with your horses if roads are blocked by
fire.
6. Keep the area around your barns and corrals well cleared of brush and other
combustible materials (at least 30 feet).
7. If you must evacuate your horses from a burning barn, close the stall and/or barn
doors after you exit. Panicking horses have been known to run back into their stalls
if they get loose during a fire. In major fast moving barn fires where a lot of horses are
involved, you may have to lead the horses out of the barn and turn them loose if as many
as possible are to be saved.
8. If your horse is burned in a fire, you should seek veterinary medical attention
for that animal as soon as possible. A burn is always a serious medical condition,
regardless of how it initially appears. Burns to large areas of the skin allow for
easy bacterial invasion of the body and seriously burned animals usually have damage to
their respiratory tract due to smoke inhalation. Often, the respiratory damage is the
eventual cause of death in severe burn patients.
9. Do not treat your horse with any topical preparations if it has been burned
before your veterinarian arrives. The wrong choice of treatment may do more harm than
good.
10. Take the time to make a plan for what to do in the event of a fire. Discuss
the plan with everyone on the farm or at the stables, so that everyone knows what to do.
There won’t be time to figure it out once the fire starts.