Only YOU can prevent barn fires!
Apr 06 2011
Here we go again. Despite this blog and every other horse blog and message board and web site on the Internet providing excellent information on how to prevent barn fires, it happened again. Someone left a heater on to warm a calf in the horse barn and now twenty-four horses are dead, in this case Arabians.
At Least 24 Horses Dead Following Ohio Barn Fire
Local news article with more detail
From the last article:
“Two more survivors, a bay and a gray, listened from a distant corral. The horses were wobbly on their feet. They tried to eat. But hay fell from their mouths. They kept looking at the barn.
“They know what happened here,” Johnson said. “Horses have a way of communicating without saying a thing,” she said.
“They can teach you a lot.’’
What can they teach about what happened Tuesday morning at Oasis Farms?
“They can teach us,” Johnson said, “that every day is precious. And to be thankful for the horses that survived.”
How about teaching us not to ever leave any sort of space heater or heat lamp unsupervised in the barn? How about that? This is not new information. These fires happen EVERY YEAR. Look, I don’t begrudge anyone a space heater in the tack room/lounge during operating hours, but you turn it off when you leave, or better yet, you have it on a timer that does it for you in case you have a stupid moment. As for newborn animals, guess what, the truth is that if they’re out of the wind and in a dry stall with bedding, they are probably just fine. Now, I am a horse person, not a cow person, so I looked up the info about calves.
I read a number of articles and NONE of them said, OMG, you gotta put a heat lamp on a baby calf or they’ll die. (Those of you with cattle, PLEASE chime in on the comments, I really do want to hear from you because I have never had cattle and I don’t know except what I have found and read) From what I am reading, 24 horses are dead because a calf had a heat lamp on him that he didn’t even need. Oh, he’s dead too and I bet it was a more unpleasant death than hypothermia would have been.
I feel sympathy for the horses. I feel major sympathy for the boarders, who may not have had a clue that a dangerous space heater was left on in the barn. I don’t really have any sympathy for the person who decided to leave a space heater unsecured near straw so that it could topple over. (And I don’t know who that is, and I’m not necessarily blaming the barn owner because it could have been the move of an employee or a child who didn’t know better. But the fact is, 24 horses died horribly and it was totally avoidable, and I want people to read about this and stop themselves before they make the exact same mistake.)
The only thing to be gained at this point is for the 24 deaths to serve as a warning to others. Fire is a lot more likely a killer than cold. Horses and cows live in very cold climates, successfully. You can buy a baby calf a blanket just like a foal blanket if you’re that worried. $33.50 and none of this needed to happen.
For more tips on preventing barn fires, here is my previous blog on the subject:
The Topic No One Wants To Talk About
198 comments to “Only YOU can prevent barn fires!”
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Terrible
But also not surprising, people are just as careless with space heaters in their own homes. I just googled some stats, apparently space heaters are associated with about 21,800 residential fires every year in the US and those fires kill aprox 300 people. A year! Space heaters should never be left unattended anywhere, at any time.
It is so sad. And totally avoidable. Calves are being born right now on the side of windy hills in central IL and doing fine. I also can’t imagine why anyone would have a space heater near a barn that could cause a fire. I heat my tack/feed room with an oil-filled sealed heater. I never have to worry about a fire than and everything says warm and dry. I have hung heat lamps in the stalls, but only after making sure there was no way the mare could knock it down.
I’ve got oil-filled radiators in my home, and if you’re not leaving something sensitive on top of them, they’re on more likely to start a fire than any other electrical implement. (In other words, it could still happen if you’re totally unlucky. I once had a brief fire inside a socket which I only noticed when I wanted to plug something else in and it was all black and scary.
Space heaters are inefficient, expensive to run, and dangerous – so why *would* you have one in your barn?
This article said it was a foal, not a calf, which makes more sense. It’s from the same website, but more recent.
http://www.zanesvilletimesrecorder.com/article/20110406/NEWS01/104060306/1002/news01/Ohio-fire-official-24-horses-die-barn-fire
I think the author of the previous article may not have known what a baby horse is called.
It does make more sense if that is the case, but still…who doesn’t know about foal blankets? Foals don’t need heat on them. They aren’t chicks, for heaven’s sake.
A barn fire is every horseman’s worst nightmare. The horse’s body under the tarp, with the burned barn in the background, is heartbreaking.
The most dangerous fire hazard is idiots, especially people who ignore fire hazards because they think it can’t happen to them. I once fired a barn worker on the spot when I caught him coming down from the haymow with a lighted cigarette in his mouth(!) He said, “Hey, I’m careful–I keep my hand underneath it.” I ran him off the place–too stupid to live, and way too stupid (and dangerous!) to set foot on my farm.
The big hunter/jumper barn that I rode at in college cut too many corners with safety. A few years later, their show barn burned, killing 10 wonderful horses. Later that year, my stable attended a show in their indoor ring, and we were appalled to see the trainer filling an “alligator” space heater with kerosene while it was running, with kerosene spilling onto the sawdust in the barn aisle. We left, and never went back–I wouldn’t have my horse in a place like that for 10 minutes. They’re long out of business–no surprise.
One thing every horseperson can do to prevent barn fires is DON’T SMOKE. If you don’t smoke, don’t start, and if you do, there’s no better reason for a horseman to quit. If you don’t smoke, at least you know it will never be your cigarette that started a barn fire.
Grey Mare, old only in wisdom, I’m sure; and I agree completely and this is my favorite asshat subject of all time: THERE ARE PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO JUST DO NOT CARE AND ARE TOO STUPID TO LIVE BUT USUALLY END UP KILLING OTHERS RATHER THAN REMOVING THEMSELVES (APPROPRIATELY) FROM THE GENE POOL. The WORST fire hazards are the idiots who smoke in/around barns. I can and will name names if asked. Barn in Eugene Oregon – BO allowed her help to not only smoke in the barns (which were death traps anyway between the cobwebs, dryrot, and overhead hay storage) AND PUT THEIR CIGS OUT IN THE shavings-covered aisles “because it’s so hard to find barn help we can’t piss them off.” Barn in Kirkland, Washington – BO allowed her not-in-this-nation-legally help to work on vehicles including using a WELDER while engine running, INSIDE the barn in the barn aisle with both end doors closed, “because it’s so hard to find barn help we can’t piss them off.” (It was later discovered that the amateur welders were placing false bottoms on trucks and vans for drug-running purposes.) Another barn in Kirkland, Washington – BO and BM both smoked, stubbed their cigs out IN old hay and straw BALES which had been placed by the stalls for seating purposes. They also had turned off the smoke alarms because dust in the never-watered aisleway (shavings on top of clay) would set them off “and piss them off.”
Fugly OT but: please, please do a blog on what many of us west coasters are also beginning to be worried about. You-know-what from Japan: contaminated air, contaminated sea water. (If it’s nothing to worry about then why oh why did the guvmint make its supposedly public-access real-time info on this completely unavailable???) Those of us who fed horses for years on hay grown downwind from Hanford, oh God, not knowing NOT KNOWING and then losing horse after horse after horse to strange cancers, children drinking contaminated milk from cows which grazed in pastures downwind from Hanford, later having dozens if not hundreds of cancer clusters – alarmist I am NOT, conspiracy theorist NEVER, worked in legal far too long, cynical is a better description. And I am getting cynical AND very worried about this incipient danger now facing us on the west coast far more than points east….not that worrying will get me anywhere but I sure would like to know if I am the only one worrying about this as elevated radiation levels were showing up in Oregon dairies two weeks ago and radiation isn’t the worst that can happen, cesium is – it NEVER goes away!
I want to reply to this before fugly considers doing a post (not that I think she is actually) that will do nothing but encourage uninformed paranoia about the “threat” Japan poses on the west coast. Just for reference sake, I am a Chemical Engineer, I am not speaking out of my ass, I am familiar with radiation and it’s sources.
Japan is not a real radioactive threat to the west coast. By the time the radiation from their plant gets across the ocean it will be in such small amounts it won’t even be detectable and if it is it will not be considered a threat. There are well established numbers made by the people who monitor radiation in our country about what is and isn’t considered a threat. This is not considered dangerous. One of the biggest sources of radiation you can experience? Going on a plane ride, going through the airport. Your horses are not in danger due to Japan. Ignore the paranoia, it’s born out of lack of information and knowledge. The scientists and engineers and meteorologists know what they’re talking about.
From what I had read about this, I was inclined toward your viewpoint to begin with.
When it comes to things like this, I don’t know that blogging will do much…the truth is, we are repeatedly exposed to toxins and I think most of us are pretty damn immune to them by now. I personally theorize that the more careful you are to protect yourself, the more vulnerable you are! I constantly point at the fact that I live off of caffeine, aspartame, Taco Bell and beer, and seem to have FAR fewer health problems than most of my 40+ friends. So go figure…maybe the chemicals have upped my resistance to things!
Like one vet said: if the fallout from Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t cause problems, this sure won’t.
From what I have read recently, they have found slightly higher levels of radiation on the West Coast, but a banana has 3500 times the amount of radiation, mwhich occurs naturally in the banana. And the levels are 5000 times smaller than the level considered unsafe. The Pacific is a vast reservoir for dissipating stuff like radiation.
Does it make sense to compare electromagnetic radiation (like at the airport) to nuclear radiation (like from a power plant)? We can inhale cesium, is there anything comparable to that from finite exposure to EM radiation?
It does, it is the dosage that counts, the radiation source is only half the important information. And EM radiation can be ionising radiation, ie. gamma rays and radiation exposure during a flight is due to cosmic rays (ie. not at the airport). There is so much hysteria regarding japan’s nuclear issues post tsunami, the extreme likelihood is unless you live local to the incident, you wont have any exposure to dangerous levels and no long term elevated exposure.
Well said, hellybones.
Was the barn in Eugene located within riding distance of Mt. Pisgah? I boarded there for a very short time, and I get shivers thinking about the dangerous stuff. I moved when I was in my horse’s stall and overheard the electrician talking to the barn owner (who smoked in the barn ALL the time) that she was lucky she hadn’t had a fire yet because of all the hay and dust in the wiring. Her answer? “We’ll get around to it.” Yeah, I moved in a week. There was a wall FALLING DOWN in my friends’ stall and when she brought it to the owners’ attention she got the same answer.
What is an alligator space heater?
And whoa, the barn burned and they lost 10 horses, and a few months later you caught someone filling a space heater *while it was on* and spilling kerosene onto sawdust in the process? Holy shit, some people are stupid.
As a smoker, I’ve had it drilled into me to never NEVER EVER smoke in or near the barn. If I want to smoke that much, then I can go sit my butt in my car, finish my smoke there, put it out in my ashtray, and deal with it. My family was also huge on not throwing the butt out the window, because of the chance of starting a prairie/field fire – and I’ve never done it, and never will. Just because I choose to have a habit many folks think is nasty, doesn’t mean I get to be crappy about exposing everybody to it up close.
Heck, if these folks that want me to quit smoking would get together and buy me a couple horses, and support them, I’d sure quit to spend more time with them. Haha.
Yet ANOTHER thing I learned about horsemanship from Black Beauty! I had nightmares about the stable fire in that book for years after reading it.
Thank you so much for sharing this. I am constantly fighting with my parents about fire hazards in their barn. They have the mentality of “It’ll be ok just this one time” and do things like leave a space heater running all night if it’s below 0 degrees.
Right now they have a calf that is about 4 weeks old, and he is sick with god knows what. So of course he gets a heat lamp at night, right next to his bed of straw.
Nothing I say seems to have any weight. I have even moved my horse to a different barn (where I am being charged 4x the board) to get him away from the unnecessary dangers that my parents think are acceptable.
So, I emailed this article to my parents, and my dad promised he would double-check the calf’s heat lamp to make sure it’s secure, and it will only be needed for “a few more days.” I guess that’s a step in the right direction…
At the very least, how about hanging it with a cage around it, as one commenter just described? Hanging it out of the baby’s reach (or any other animal’s) seems a LOT safer to me than having it anywhere that it could tip over.
Last night, I went over there to check things out for myself, and they have heat lamps (with some sort of metal cage over them) hanging up on the stall wall about 6 inches higher than the calf can currently reach. I feel much better about the situation, but I still worry that a barn cat or something could still knock them down.
Cute little booger, isn’t he? In a couple of years, he will be delicious steak
Aren’t infrared “chick” heaters safer? I see them all the time at the feed stores, they warm the body not the air or the bedding (not sure of the science there), dog breeders use them, other horse breeders use them, the cords are industrial/construction type that are impervious to moisture (and NOT made in China!!).
Sealed oil heaters can and do heat things hot enough to smolder and catch. They aren’t safe either.
It is not enough to turn off heaters. You need to UNPLUG them too.
Those infra red heaters still get hot and if they com in contact with combustable material will cause a fire. We used them during chick days at the feed store where I used to work. One day a kid knocked over the stand or the pole that the heaters were conected to into the area where the chicks were. The straw began to smoke and burn very soon after coming in contact with the lamp. Luckily me and another coworker were nearby to get the lamp out of the bedding and chick bedding. We almost ended up with BBQed chicken nuggets. Luckily no one was hurt and none of the chicks perished.
See, this is what I’m talking about. Not knocking you or anyone else who works at the store, but people go into those farm stores, they see those stupid clip on heat lamps, and they think using them is okay. How much better if the stores actually hung CORRECTLY their heat lamps, instead of using lamps that are not safe, and lulling customers into thinking that’s an okay way to use heat?
What a horrible way to die – those poor horses and calf. I would like to think that this is an eye-opener for people using space heaters…but I doubt it. I feel sorry for the people who owned those horses, I would be absolutely heartsick to hear that my pet perished that way, or anything I loved for that matter.
A fire has to be one of the worst ways for anything to die. When I was a kid we used to stop and visit a horse on an old country road on the way to my parents friends house. Kind of a strange set-up, as with many old properties the barn was literally right up on the road and the house set far back. “Doc” was an old bay quarter horse/draft cross who loved the neighborhood kids. He was always standing at the fence looking for a handout or scratch and everybody would stop to visit him and give him a treat. One day we were on our way to visit my parents friends and were horrified to see that the big old antique barn had burned literally to the ground. Doc wasnt there and I was heartbroken.
Later, when the adults thought the kids were out of earshot I overheard someone telling my Mom that Doc had been trapped inside the barn and there was no way to get to him. He screamed for a good 10 minutes before he finally went silent when the barn collapsed on him. The guy said it was a sound he will never forget and even the neighboring hardened old-time farmers were crying when they heard Doc scream. It was horrible.
People are human and make mistakes. That’s why they’re called accidents. What seems harmless at the time can have (and did at this barn) very tragic repercussions. Very sad.
I agree, but when you know better you do better, if you have any sense. I may have heard that it was unsafe to keep small appliances plugged in, but it didn’t hit home until TWO people I know had coffeepots catch fire. (Maybe I don’t have any sense
). The first was my neighbor, whose coffee pot caught fire in the middle of the night and burned the kitchen completely. Fortunately, they woke up and got out in time and the Fire Department put out the blaze before the whole house was destroyed. They didn’t think the coffee pot was turned on, just plugged in. I can’t think of too many things more terrifying than waking up to find your house on fire. The same thing happened to my Dad a short time later. He was sitting in his recliner and he heard something, turned around and saw his coffee pot on the counter in flames. It was just starting so he put it out without any serious damage to his kitchen. I don’t remember the details of how he did that because this was many years ago.
You can be sure that now I unplug every appliance after I use it, except the major things like my built-in microwave and my ‘fridge, but now I worry about my husband’s snake pile of computer-related wires. And the quantity of wires nowadays with the television and all of its accompanying cable boxes, vcrs, dvd players, google tv box and who-knows-what-all-those-other-things-are, is a nightmare to behold with respect to potential fires.
In my barn design, I will now include (in addition to a sprinkler system which was strongly recommended by other readers of this blog) a built-in forced air heating system for my barn, so I can heat a stall with the furnace in a separate building and pipe the hot air through an underground duct to my barn. I will have electricity in the barn, all in conduit, and lighting, but kitchen appliances will have to be in the outdoor kitchen. Liniments and flammable cleaners will be in the tack/grooming shed separate from the main barn. Ditto electric clippers. The small amounts of hay for immediate/weekly feedings will be in a “hay safe” in the main barn, which will be a fireproof cinderblock box with separate venting. I love the look of open beams but I think it would be safer to have a solid sheetrocked or paneled ceiling, for ease of dusting and cobweb prevention. So now my design for a beautiful twelve-stall horse barn is down to about four stalls with all the goodies I want.
The only thing left in the barn which is flammable is the bedding, and the best I can think of to deal with that, fire-hazard wise, is the sprinkler system.
This should be an eye-opener for everyone to be more cautious with what we do around the barn. I’ve forgotten to shut off the light in the hayloft and woken up in the middle of the night to see it glowing. All it takes is a burst, hot bulb to land in the hay…I get so pissed at myself, especially when it’s 10 degrees outside and I trudge down there in jammies at 2:00 a.m. My fault, my responsibility.
Hay fires are scary because you can’t see it coming. I have large doors on the north and south sides of my loft and they are kept open for at least a month after hay is put up. Any heavy bales are opened and flakes separated to get air and most dry well enough to be useful and not mold. Getting air to fresh hay is an absolute must.
I also feel that we need to use a bit of empathy for this situation. Hindsight is always 20-20 and every one of us makes mistakes that bite use afterwards. I can’t even imagine the grief they are feeling right now. There was no malice involved in their actions and they have suffered a tremendous loss. My heart goes out to them.
This is a good point. I’ve bought lamps before at feed stores, which also sell the ‘clip on’ version of heat lamps. Seriously, I know better than to use that type, but I can see someone assuming that if they sell them that way, it must be safe. Heartbreaking, for sure.
I know that I have truly forgotten things from time to time and am grateful that it has never led to a tragedy like this. My sympathies to the horse owners and the person who accidently caused this, it will be hard to live with.
And most accidents are preventable by using common sense, dilegence in reading and heeding the hazard information listed on the paper work of such items, not being lazy and by not having the ever living “it wont happen to me” attitude. Keeping the barn up to date on electrical maintenance (and inspected) up to date on regular barn keeping maintenance, having enough sense god gave retarded chickens, and practicing diligent fire saftey techniques are HUGE prevention matters. Now if one did practice all of that and still ended up with a fire (due to no fault of the owner/manager and even inspectors and others) that is when it becomes an Accident. Shit does happen sometimes even when the best is practiced. But if you have a barn full of fans covered in cobwebs and dust and still running them then you are just asking for a fire. If you let ppl smoke in your barn (the outcomes is still the same for electrical fires and ciggarett smoking caused fires) then you are asking for a fire and is NOT an accident. That was caused by laziness and failure to keep fire hazards out and away from a barn. IF you have an old barn with wiring out of date (not in code or in conduets) exposed wiring or what have you then your asking for a fire. Being to cheap to have new wiring is not an excuse to have after the barn is engulfed by fire and animals are dead or dying. Not having fire extinquishers is not an excuse. Not having a fire escape plan is not a valid excuse. (Hell, you should have this in your own home for your own family and your own safety). Yes we are humans and we are fallible and even the best make stupid decisions and o stupid things but by being diligent and by heeding all of the hazards and by being smart can lessen “accidents” by ten fold. The problem is most ppl dont practice such. I can name a bunch right off hand. Why do you think Wal-Mart is constantly being sued over something, an accident that could have been prevented but they are horrible in such matters. I know i work for the assholes.
There’s accidents and accidents-waiting-to-happen.
Real accidents happen. Material fails, animals act unpredictably, people make bad decisions in the split of a second.
There are three things you can do, however:
- become safety aware
- be risk-averse unless you have a good reason and you can calculate the risk
- put procedures into place when there isn’t a need so they will hold when there IS.
Safety-aware means that you inform yourself of the dangers, and that you learn to examine any situation with regards to the dangers that might bring. It’s a way of life – you *never* leave anything sharp around where a horse can reach it, you *never* stand on anything wobbly, you always have a second person for certain things, you make sure somebody knows where to find you etc.
Risk averse doesn’t mean that you’re not having any fun, but if you wonder whether it’s a good idea to (ride the new horse when you’re on your own, try jumping that big log one more time, clip a horse on your own when you know he can be funny about it) just don’t do it. Get off that horse when he’s playing up and you don’t know whether you can handle it. Put on that damn helmet even though ole Dobbin has never thrown anybody. When you decide to take a risk, it’ll be – see point one – an informed decision.
Working things out when there’s no need and no pressure means that you’re more likely to do the right thing when there IS. If you *always* ride in a helmet you won’t forget it. If you *always* clean and check your tack once a week you’ll know that it’s safe to use on Wednesday evening when you’re in a hurry. If you *always* put away yard implements in that space horses can’t reach chances are that you won’t trip over them in the dark and that you still remember to put them away when you’re tired and weary. Collecting telephone numbers of everybody and their vets and farriers, having the barn’s wiring checked once a year, making sure your vehicles are safe to use after sitting in a car park all winter: if you have procedures to check and fix things, and you think through potential sources of dangers when you have time and leisure, chances are that you’ll prevent preventable problems.
If the fence breaks and everybody knows where to find materials and tools to fix them, nobody will put up a piece of string or lean an old pallet against the gap.
If you *do* have an accident, at least you’ll be able to say that you did all you possibly could.
We had the “wood stove in the barn” discussion again at my home. My husband said “you can walk outside and get hit and killed”. Why yes, yes I can. I can have someone cross their lane of traffic and hit me and I’ll die. But dammit I’m not going to say “fuck wearing a seatbelt” because “I could die anyway”. I COULD live. Shit happens but damn it do what you have to do to stay safe ANYWAY. Like NOT having an ignition source in a dry, dusty old barn with timbers that probably let go of their last bit of moisture before the time that my grandmother’s grandmother was being born.
A MN barn I managed in the late ’90s burned to the ground in 2004. They had a January foal they they thought needed to be kept warm. The barn was always kept heated to 38 degrees, but someone decided that wasn’t warm enough for baby and built a “tent” over the foaling stall using plastic sheets and a heat lamp. Several horses died when the barn burned to the ground.
Many years ago, on a day in late January, a local breeder had a mare who didn’t pass the afterbirth and had to be put down. Foal was 12 hours old, had had colostrum luckily but would need to be raised by hand. Breeder didn’t know anything about doing it and was going to euth the baby too rather than make a hash of it. Vet knew a friend of mine and said he knew she could do it so breeder turned over a wonderfully bred crabbet colt papers and all (and later after he saw my friend’s success, raised another orphan). It was very cold and we tried to get a stall warm enough without the mare’s body heat to help. Thought of heat lamps but couldn’t get them close enough to do good without being very unsafe. so that baby was raised in her tack room (which was also her bedroom at the time). A stove there was roped off so he couldn’t hurt himself on it and every 2 hours the little buggar woke up and got to be fed. Had we insisted on the heat lamps, who knows. Bottom line; we did the same thing in a much safer manner!
I’m not far from this farm that burned. I didn’t know the owners but I know I got the AHA Region 14 email blast about it. Terrible and even more so since it was preventable.
My parents raise beef cattle and as long as the calves are out of the wind and have access to dry bedding they’ll be OK. We had an orphan calf survive an incredibly snowy winter in a run in shed with no blanket or heater. They were in a separate area than the rest of our cattle but I imagine their body heat alone kept her nice and warm. I don’t recall us using a heat lamp on any baby animal on our farm except for our chicks, poults (baby turkeys) and ducklings. Even then they weren’t in the barn, they were in their own house.
I read somewhere (how’s that for scientific?) that cattle breeders like their calves to be born early because they have a very low death rate when born in cold weather, even snow and very cold conditions, but the wet, cold weather is deadly.
sad… but so preventable… stories like this make me very happy that I don’t have electricity in my barn!! I can’t be tempted with space heaters!
Hey Fugs! Can you run with this?
http://www.userltriangle.org/Tyler.html
In Guilford County, NC an abandoned horse was found. He had numerous wounds all over his body and was skinny. He was taken to NCSU vet clinic were it was determined that due to his injuries the best thing for him was to be humanely euthanized. USERL is looking for information on this 2 year old that was named Tyler. If anyone has information about this horse, please contact us at: info@userl.org or call 800-650-8549
I have a metal barn, which prevents chewing. It also won’t catch fire. However, there is lots around a metal barn that CAN burn, like bedding, hay, feed sacks, which I keep and use as garbage bags, etc.
I have a teenager who cleans for me. Big rangy kid, 10th grader. Very respectful and dependable, two qualities that make up for the fact that he doesn’t clean like like I do. He picks up what he can see — the buried apples stay “buried.” He also opens the shavings bale and swings it to empty it so a good bit of bedding ends up in the rafters.
But I work part time, and it’s nice having someone spell me on the cleaning a couple days a week.
He had a friend with him last fall. They were in the stall chatting, and I smelled cigarette smoke. Nearly came unglued. He said he put the cigarette out on the sole of his shoe, but I checked that stall four or five times the remainder of the evening. Didn’t fire him outright — should have — but as I say, he’s WAY better than nothing. Since I spoke to him, we have had no more issues with smoking. I’ve also cut him back to cleaning two days a week from the original three, and he knows it won’t take but one more screw-up before it’s ZERO days, and I’ll either find someone else or “get a grip” and take care of things myself.
Fire isn’t just from space heaters or cigarettes. Faulty electrical cords, switches that “spark,” or even bulbs that shatter can cause fire. A friend had a horse in a barn with fluorescent bulbs. One of them exploded and she came upon her horse eating the glass (she calls him Vet Bill). She went to Home Depot and got plastic “sleeves” for fluorescent tubes. Paid for them for the entire barn out of her pocket because the barn owner couldn’t be bothered. (Another topic for another day, BOs who just want your board money and think their responsibility ends there).
The picture above with the barn in the distance and the body in the foreground says it all.
Okay, now I have to add that to my barn design. Sleeves for my fluorescent lights, or maybe fiber optic lights, so there’s no power source in the barn at all. Hmmm, how to handle fans?
Just so you know, a metal barn may not burn but if the things in or around it catches fire the building will heat and roast everything inside.
I would have flipped a shit over that.
I think I’ve said this every time fire or saftey comes up on this blog. I’m a smoker (not proud of it) but I DO NOT smoke at barns, where I work or where I board or otherwise, even if I’m there for hours on end and even if there is a safe way to go about it.
If you’re a smoker and you can’t hold your shit together for 5 hours without a cig, and would rather put your livelihood and lives in danger for your addiction, there’s a lot more morally going wrong than being addicted to nicotine.
What a tragedy. I cannot imagine what went through their poor heads (the horses). As they stated, horses know. They are super sensitive creatures and can tell you things if you just listen to their body language. I know I have learned much by watching mine. This is also the reason why I will not totally stall my horses. I will always have a run for them to have outside their stall with ample room to be far enough away from the structure in case of disaster. Mine are kept in a dry paddock surrounding the barn, even if there is no electricity, lightening could strike and burn the place with all the hay in it. I used to keep Boone at a private farm about 6 years ago. They were stupid, stupid! It almost cost me my horse but thankfully the weather was fair and he was left out (Thanksgiving, of all holidays!). But their barn burned to the ground. The people were so medicated with antidepressants, and what-have-you that they never head a thing. The barn was about 20 or so yards from the house. They woke up in the morning as usual and went to make a pot of coffee, looked out the kitchen window and saw the barn roof on the ground. Nothing else was left but ashes. They never knew a thing. I lost 15+ years worth of tack collecting. Some things I could never replace, but I still have my horse, thankfully. Live and learn.
On another note, here’s the latest I have heard on Carpe Diem Farm:
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2011/04/wallowa_sheriffs_deputies_become_cowboys_to_herd_exotic_horses_through_joseph.html
Re: Carpe Diem Farm, interesting (and head-bangingly painful) that there are over 900 horses needing homes and care, and yet, “…eight horses have been sold to satisfy civil liens against owner Byrde Lynn Hill of Bellevue, Wash Even in the current depressed horse market, the mares brought an average $3,500 to $4,000, and a stallion commanded more than $19,000, according to Undersheriff Steve Rogers.” Figuring 7 mares at $3500 apiece plus the stallion’s $19,000 is almost $45,000… why on earth didn’t the owner sell some horses himself to feed the rest? What is WRONG with people?
The owner probably slipped into hoarding mentality, after initially starting out to make money from her pretty, pretty horses. From what I saw in the article, the horses are only starting to show the signs of neglect, since the ones in the picture looked to be in decent shape, and the ones sold commanded those prices. I think it is good that at least some of them could command those prices, it means the cost of their seizure and care might be able to made back.
I don’t remember what I read earlier about Carpe Diem, but it seems like something happened in the last year or so that got the owner depressed, and they started to hold on to the things they could, which would mean not selling any of the horses. So many times hoarding starts with depression or other mental disorder, whether temporary or permanent, and the person needs therapy to help keep it from happening again.
I would love a Lusitano, but can’t have any horse right now because I don’t have the money or place to keep one.
Also, I didn’t see 900 horses in that article, are you sure you aren’t thinking about the guy that had 829 foundation QHs seized?
Pretty sure this was the lady with the ‘pretty’ breeds who had some of her horses and stallions so neglected they were exhibiting self mutilation? This computer is terribly laggy or I would go find the old blog entry- but from what I remember most of her horses were in shit poor shape, wild, and breeding with each other willy nilly. It probably did start off as hoarding- but quickly escalated to neglect and not giving a crap about your animals. I seem to remember her having some very nice horses as far as bloodlines go (probably why one of the stallions, likely half wild by now still sold for 19k) but having a giant farm and tons of horses quickly did her in. In that picture not all of them look too bad- so I can’t say for SURE that that was this lady- I just remember SOME lady having a ton of Andalusian type horses and not doing anything to take care of them.
Clearly the woman has to have some sort of mental problem to turn down that kind of money. And there are 120 horses in the Carpe Diem herd, the nearly 900 horses belonged to that asshole Leachman with the QH herd in Montana.
Quite likely she felt each of the horses sold was worth a minimum of 6 figures, and wasn’t going to “give” them away at those prices.
Well at least there’s no worrying about these horses ending up with the KB, if half-wild mares can command and average of $3,500 to $4,000. I’m glad the Iberian horses are a loved in the U.S.
We have a small cow operation and live in Central Oregon. In the late winter/early spring when most cow operations here calve, it can get pretty nasty. Unless the weather is expected to be extreme (I’m talking 0F or lower plus north wind chill) most operations don’t bother to move cows to shelter; if they do move them to shelter, only those that look like they are about to calve are moved. We put straw under the trees in the calving pasture and after the babies are born, moms bed them down under the trees. If we have a calf that is struggling, we have a spot set up in the hayshed that is blocked from the north wind (that blows incessantly) that is layered with several inches of straw. If the calf does really need to be somewhere warm, we bring them to the house and make a little corral in our laundry room; if they make it through the night, they go back out with mom in the morning to the hayshed where we watch them and give medications if needed. We don’t use my horse barn for the cow operation even though it is right next to the hayshed. The cows actually don’t like the barn, they prefer the setup we have in the hayshed. And we certainly would never use a heat source in the hayshed or anywhere there is hay or straw – heck we don’t even hot brand since part of our corral/chute setup is under part of the hayshed. No heat sources anywhere in the hayshed or horse barn, except a wall heater in the tack room (circuit breaker is always off unless I know we are getting below 0) and the automatic waterers in the stalls. I grew up raising sheep, and in our sheep stalls we did have heat lamps; they were suspended from the ceiling and securely enclosed so the sheep couldn’t touch them. They were used only in extreme conditions, and I don’t believe we ever used them overnight. If we had lambs that were struggling, we brought them to the house and sat up with them all night in front of a fire. Sorry for the long response – in my experience, if a newborn animal is struggling to the point of needing a heat source through the night, we bring the baby to the house, and everyone else I know around here does the same thing (some folks have space in their garage they use for this during the winter). I’ve never heard of anyone around here using a heat source, especially overnight or without supervision, in a barn.
I have to say, the image of baby lambs in front of the fire is just TOO cute…
When my dad was a kid, they’d bring in weak piglets and put ‘em in a box in a pre-warmed oven. More cuteness!
“If the calf does really need to be somewhere warm, we bring them to the house and make a little corral in our laundry room; ”
I was thinking the same thing! Rather than risking the lives of all your animals putting a possibly unstable heat source in a place filled with dust, hay and stray, why not bring the baby indoors if you’re so sure it NEEDS a heated environment? Make a little corral in a bathroom and block it with a baby gate for the night.
The cow/calf operation i worked for had a heated maternity barn, but properly set up to be safely heated. The calving season started in February and all fresh, wet, calves and their mommy’s would come in to the mat barn till they were dry, mothering their calves, and had their tags and shots. Often it would get -25-30 c and we would herd all the wee ones in for the day and let them out to nurse. Also we had little mittens for their ears. After a few days they get turned out into a huge shed with shavings and as long as they are dry and well fed the cold doesn’t bother them.
“little mittens for their ears” what an image!
What used to be pretty common in the UK (and still may be) was to put the lamb in the oven for a few hours. This was in big range cookers which have an oven space next to the firebox. You can have the fire on low and leave the door to the oven partially open and it’s nice and warm (but not hot enough to burn them). A few hours in there warms the lamb up nicely.
This is common practice for everyone I knew in the UK who farmed, too – in fact, one of the reasons why a lot of farmhouses had the big solid cast iron type stoves that basically were just on all the time was that it kept the kitchen just the right temperature for bringing lambs and so on in for a cold evening, but didn’t get hot enough that they could burn themselves on it. (Well, unless they somehow managed to unlatch an oven door or something, but I think they’d really have to work at that.)
(Those types of stoves also generally provide hot water for heating the rest of the house via radiators and hot water for showering and so on, so that’s another reason why they’re always on – it’s basically one unit that does all the heating necessary. But the nice constant even warmth from it is definitely part of the reason why they turn up on older working farms quite often – it was an investment to purchase, but the thing will probably last forever.
)
I’d like to add, Fugly, that it’s not just heaters, lamps, bad wiring and careless cigarette-smokers that cause this kind of horrific damage; wet (green) hay in the barn will also cause a barn fire.
If you bale and store hay that contains too much moisture, a chemical reaction can cause the hay to spontaneously combust. I know, it sounds like a bad X-Files episode, but it’s true– I’ve experienced it.
Three years ago I bought a batch of hay from my cousins up the road. Usually their hay is AWESOME. This time they’d cut a bunch, realized a freak rainstorm was coming, and baled it before it had time to dry right. After we put it in the barn, some of the bales started to smoke.
We had to unpack the whole barn. Luckily not all of it was affected, but it really sucked. I’m only glad the barn didn’t get wrecked!
Here’s a lady’s blog, describing how 150 of her cow hay bales spontaneously combusted: http://dvmswife.blogspot.com/2010/09/round-bales-of-hay-for-sale.html Awesome pics there.
Here’s a short paper from WSU describing the effect: http://wa-hay.org/publications/Spontaneous%20Combustion%20in%20Hay%20Stacks.pdf
Really, really good point to make. People forget what a hazard hay can be.
I’ve seen a manure pile spontaneously burst into flame, too.
I’ve seen something similar with wood chips, too. Big pile of them, getting warm in the summer sun, not fully dried out. We noticed they’d started “smoking” and had to open them up to let the heat out (and it was toasty!) and watch to make sure they didn’t actually catch fire.
One of the yards I’ve been on used to get sawdust/shavings straight from the saw mill by the truck load – they’d come along and dump them out in the car park. They were kept covered but did get damp and they were so warm, you could see the steam coming off them.
It’s the concept behind composting, layering green vegetation (usually grass) with dry vegetation to heat up (though not burst into flame if done properly) and kill weed seeds and pathogens. As a child, I remember sticking my arm into a pile of grass clippings my dad had put on the compost pile, and being amazed how warm it was.
You sure that wasn’t deliberate? I’ve moved my horse from two barns where someone thought that burning a muckheap in place was a good way to reduce the volume.
Yup, manure piles and wet hay – there’s a reason many farms store their hay in a separate structure.
We had a very dry autumn. It would’ve taken NOTHING to start a barn fire, anywhere around here. I hate hate HATE it when people smoke in barns… usually right under a NO SMOKING sign.
As for space heaters… wow. I don’t even like to leave a RADIO on in the barn all night.
Our BM goes further than just about anyone. ALL power to the barn is cut off when she closes up at night. Tha’ts all the breakers plus the main power switch. OFF. More than once, one of the breakers has jumped in the morning when she turns them on — signalling a bad wire that could have caused a fire overnight. Our barn is unheated, even at -30C (-22F) and stays that way. There is a tack room heater that gets turned off at night.
Hay storage is in the barn loft, with spacing between the boards for air circulation. The worst thing is putting hay in an air-tight loft.
Wet / improperly cured hay definitely will heat up, smoke and eventually combust. I’ve seen the heat and smoke parts – outside of a building as I knew what could happen. Those bales were amazingly hot to the touch. And if it’s wet – but not wet enough to catch fire – it could darn sure mold on you.
Seems it’s best to have a no tolerance policy on smoking and combustibles – with serious attention to and maintenance of electrics. Speaking of – there was a recall on Lasko box fans recently. Everyone please check your barn fans too!
Such a shame that these horses were lost. Although not the case here, I always find it so tragic when horses run into the barn when it is on fire because they feel it is the safest place to be.
There is a large horse facility in the Enumclaw/Auburn area that I have seen one of the trainers smoking in the barn on several occasions. I no longer have a horse there but the trainer is still there. There are some big money horses in that barn and I wonder if the owners know the danger their horses could be in. The trainer always seemed responsible when smoking but imho cigarettes and barns don’t mix.
I found the WSU paper on spontaneous combustion somewhat funny as a few years before the publishing date a load of hay being delivered to the beef center cought fire while on the truck. I can’t remember if it was spontaneous combustion or if the hay hit the barn roof and was shoved onto the semi’s exhaust stacks. Either way it was a lot of hay lost and the truck was substantially damaged.
“The trainer always seemed responsible when smoking but imho cigarettes and barns don’t mix.”
You are correct, and if you caught that trainer smoking anywhere NEAR a barn, then he or she wasn’t being responsible, I don’t care how ‘careful’ they are with their fags.
I like how there are rolls of hay that are actually in the pond still smoking. Because 40,000 gallons of water clearly wasn’t enough. Just amazing. Glad no one got hurt there, except maybe their insurance rates.
My God…. this is only about an hour away from me.
This is such a horrible and easily avoidable accident. People make fun of me because I’m such a nazi about barn safety, but it’s events like this that are the reason why.
All of our baled hay and straw is stored away from the horses and the house on pallets to allow for airflow and for dust/dirt to fall to the floor, which is kept swept all the time, and cobwebs are never allowed to take up residence in both the hay shed and the horses’ lean-to. The light sources that we use are explosion-proof lamps that you would see workers in the graineries use because dust from hay, feed, and bedding is just as explosive as it is from grain. Even then, the lights are only on when we’re present, and are turned off when we leave. We don’t use heat sources of any kind down there because extra forage, hot mash, and a blanket are all the horses really need if it gets that cold.
I see a lot of cages on the light bulbs that are 8′ up in the air, so that on the off chance a horse is standing on his hind legs to reach the ceiling he’d hit the cage but the bulb can’t be damaged.
Those cages are definitely nice to have as a “just in case”. Lucky for us, all of our lights are 15ft off the ground in the lean-to. If one of them can reach them at that height, we’re entering them into the Rolex 3-Day!
Jesus, that’s scary. Those poor horses, what a horrible way to die.
I guess having a separate hay barn/shed is the safest way to go. Anyone have any idea how far it should be from the barn?
Not sure how far, but one thing to consider is the prevailing winds. Where I board we have a separate hay barn, probably 20 yards or so from the closest horse barn. Doesn’t sound like a lot but there is gravel between the 2, it is metal rather than wood, and since there is almost always a strong wind there that blows West and the horse barn is north, it’s pretty good protection. We move over a small amount of hay to each horse barn, and only long after its gone past the point of being able to be hot. We’d hate to lose the tractor, quad, and carts (we drive as well as ride), but they can be replaced. the horses can’t!
Are there any sorts of fire-proofing measures one can take to make a barn more safe? i.e. what about stall doors that open if a certain temperature is reached or having an overhead sprinkler system? Are things like that prohibitively expensive for most people?
There’s an overhead sprinkler system in the barn I board at. I don’t know what they cost but, boy, I love knowing that it is there!
The same can happen with water submerge-able water heaters. If not properly used, they can easily land outside of the water bucket and catch loose hay on fire.
Or even worse…horse has an inattentive owner and drinks the water down to the heater…then you have a possible fire source with the hay in the water…
Seen it in Alaska….thankfully, other people were attentive.
This happened at the Meadows racetrack in Washington PA. Several Standardbreds died in that one.
Fell over? Fell OVER?
We have a heating lamp in our foaling stall (and I agree, I think it’s unnecessary, but my mom disagrees) but it is up where the mare can’t reach it and properly secured. Who would leave electric anything where it could fall over or be chewed on?
Heating elements should also have a switch that shuts them off if they tip over or overheat. It’s not rocket science. The kind that automatically shut off and have a ceramic cage so they are burn proof are less than 20 bucks at Walmart.
Now, about heat lamps on babies. Plenty of calves and foals and kids and lambs have been born in snow every year since the beginning of time without freezing to death. It’s the PEOPLE, the ones who are used to nice heated houses, who think it’s too cold.
I know people who will blanket their horses – their horse with a winter coat thicker than a persian rug and it’s still 20 degrees out – because they, the humans, would be cold without a coat! Um, yes, your horse is WEARING a thick coat and doesn’t need a blanket. “Oh, well I’d feel bad not putting a blanket on her!”
And in the mean time the horses are sweating under the blankets and getting soaking wet from being overheated.
WHY are people so STUPID?!
Because people think that if they’re cold, their horse must be cold too. People take for granted just how much heat those super-fluffy coats can hold in because we’re one of the most naked mammals on the planet so it’s hard to relate. LOL
The most I blanketed this winter was a simple waterproof turnout sheet since the winds we have here in Kansas can be brutal. That simple blanket made a world of difference for KC, and she was perfectly comfortable. We also kept free-choice hay available for her at all times since forage = warmth, and she had a heated stock tank and hot mash every day. She was a happy snow-bunny while I was the one being miserable trudging through all that snow and yuck to feed her!
Plenty of calves and foals and kids and lambs, along with cow and bulls and mares and stallions and does and bucks and ewes and rams, have frozen to death since the beginning of time. Under modern animal husbandry it is much less likely, but it still can happen. (which does not excuse an electric heater in a barn)
If you need a heat source then use an infared light, it gives off good heat safely.
Yep, I ‘m a big fan of the “milkhouse” heaters that turn off when tipped over. Got one in my bathroom, as a matter of fact. The coffee maker thing: I’ve had a firefighter tell me to keep coffeemakers unplugged – they’re VERY dangerous. Worse than any other appliance except maybe toaster ovens. (I’m a French Press girl, so that’s moot for me.)
Horses evolved on the steppes. Like North Dakota, only worse. If you keep ‘em well-fed and let ‘em grow a good coat, they’re going to be OK in most cold climates.
My old barn was Western Pleasure Central, and 75% of the horses were blanketed & kept under lights from October – April. GAAAAAAH. They didn’t even SHOW in the winter, or ride all that much. The lights were those clip-on jobs you get at the farm store. Outlets were up nice and high, and of course there was a Lasko fan (is there any other brand? That recall probably made all Midwestern horse barns go a little nuts) bungeed on every stall all summer – it gets very humid and buggy here, and the fans really help, especially for the poor horses who were stalled 24/7. During a recent wet spell, ALL the horses were inside… for 5 weeks straight. That’s why it’s my OLD barn…
Actually, they evolved here in North America, and got stranded in Eurasia when the Bering land bridge was submerged.
People forget the migration over the land bridge was both ways. 
-Cyg
This is terribly, terribly sad. Whoever made the decision to leave that heater running is going to suffer the rest of his/her life. I still have nightmares about the time I killed two of my guinea pigs from heat stroke (A/C unit broke while I was gone but still should have known better), and I can’t imagine having 24 horses on my conscience.
My old trainer had an unbelievably raspy “smoker’s voice” – my husband used to make fun of her all the time. She actually didn’t smoke that much at the barn (must have done the other pack and a half a day at home, I guess), but when she did light up, it was in the middle of the arena during a lesson or right outside the main door. We had an extremely old facility just chock-full of cobwebs and old wood and boy, did that make me nervous…. For all I know, the smoking is one of the reasons she was let go from there. (The barns and arena were so old, in fact, that when the owner wound up selling the property for a housing development they were simply bulldozed down. He moved a few miles down the road and built a beautiful new state-of-the art complex which was a huge improvement, thank goodness).
Your TRAINER did this? And you stayed there?
My dad once took a lady’s boyfriend out back at our trainer’s barn and “explained” to him that you don’t light up cigarettes at the barn. I’m pretty sure fists were not involved but only because they didn’t have to be – the fellow came back pale and shaking. I just can’t believe that anyone who lights a cigarette around horses and gets caught is allowed to do it a second time. Those of us who aren’t as intimidating as my dad can get the same effect by explaining that if it happens again the person will be banned from the premises.
This is very sad. I read that the firemen could hear the horses screaming as they drove up.. I have never heard a horse scream and I hope I never do.
(Figurative hands over ears) LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA don’t want to hear that LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA.
Right there with you. I can face being a carnivore and killing my own food, but I’d really rather bury my head under the covers and pretend that nobody died in fear or pain in that barn, nope, smoke inhalation knocked the horses out painlessly…
If I ever own a barn, it’ll be something you can’t set on fire with a flamethrower.
I have heard horses scream, I hope you never have to hear it. It is one of the most haunting sounds you can ever hear and it stays with you forever.
Screams and the “death whinny” when they’re just too hurt and know they’re about to go. I hate that sound.
For space heaters I prefer oil-filled space heaters, they look something like a free-standing radiator. They’re filled with oil that acts as a heat-conductor. The oil is completely sealed and you never need to replace it. For a space heater they are pretty safe, they never get hot enough to burn things, not even paper. Of course, like all things electrical, there is a weak point–the cord and plug, as well as the electrical system it’s plugged into. I would never, ever put a anything with a cord in with an animal that can chew through it, at least not without protecting the cord. I keep one of these in my garage’s bathroom (yes, my garage has a bathroom XD ) to keep it warm.
If you have an older barn it goes without saying that you should have the electrical system checked, and possibly updated. Yes, that’s probably expensive, but replacing the electrical system is a heck of a lot cheaper than replacing the barn, and without the heartbreak of losing your animals. Even if the wiring checks out fine check the wall sockets, I have replaced plugs that literally fell apart in my hand when I took them out. Can you say fire-hazard? Replacing wall sockets is fairly easy–just read the instructions and remember to kill the power! While you are at it I am a BIG believer in Ground Fault Interrupters! A GFI is a special type of wall socket that is designed for bathrooms or anything around a water source, you maybe familiar with them, they’re the ones that ‘trip’ when the radio that was plugged into them falls into your bathtub XD. An old house me and Dad were working on had older wiring. The wire was okay, but it didn’t have a ground wire. Rather than re-wiring the entire house Dad simply installed GFIs at the first socket on each circuit of wire, if something happened the GFI would trip and prevent electrocution (and possibly a fire). This SAVED MY LIFE about two weeks later when I was installing board insulation in the crawlspace and accidentally nailed through a wire. I felt a little tingle, and then the lights went out. I can’t imagine what would have happened if the GFI hadn’t been there, EMS probably would have been hauling my fried carcass out through the crawlspace hatch.
GFIs RULE.
I loved when Mythbusters desperately tried to kill their dummy with appliances in a bathroom, but it only worked when they used vintage appliances they found at Goodwill. The ones with a GFI? Instantly turned off.
Add GFIs to my barn design.
fugs – I rarely respond to your posts though I read them almost daily. Today I just had to respond. Your tone of zero sympathy really bothers me. The owners obviously made a poor decision, but if you had read one of the more in-depth articles about this fire you would know the owners were far from callous people and most of the perished horses were their own (not borders as you state in your original post here). The woman has owned and bred Arabian horses since 1976.
Have a little heart please. No doubt they are absolutely kicking themselves to hell and back for a poor choice to place a space heater in a stall. But how ironic these very responsible Arabian horse owners are getting kicked by you just a day after your post about the other thoughtless Arabian breeded who sent her old broodies to auction.
From their website – http://www.oasisfarms.com/home
Seems like a really decent place without alot of faux gimmicks.
I think this couple deserves at least a tad bit of sympathy. Don’t you?
It’s the Fugly blog, not the Warm Fuzzies blog. As I’ve stated many times, I care about HORSES here (and other animals) not human feelings. There are plenty of warm, fuzzy, much more moderated places on the web discussing this if you want to express sympathy.
And no, I don’t think anyone should have any sympathy if I did something this dumb…I’d expect to be shredded online, and I’d deserve to be.
The initial premise of the Fugly Blog was about Fugly horses. These weren’t Fugly horses, and their owners weren’t Fugly owners – they were people who tried to do everything right but they made one mistake. I believe you have made mistakes too, right? Do you want people dragging your mistakes thru the mud and shaming you forever and ever, or do you want people to be willing to forgive you for your mistakes, to learn from your mistakes, to do better next time?
I’m not saying you should say these owners were perfect, but I think they are due *some* sympathy, and you just lost a lot of my respect by being unwilling to admit that. One of these days that attitude will come back to haunt you when you make a mistake. People will remember how you showed no sympathy to others, and you will be subject to worse abuse than you ever heaped on anyone else. Nobody is perfect and if you think you can magically avoid making mistakes or having them become known, think again.
I think that it’s everyone’s choice who to feel sympathetic toward. You feel sympathy in this case, I don’t. There are cases where I am sure I feel sympathetic, and you don’t. I feel sympathy toward the horse owners in this case who had their horses in the barn. I simply don’t feel sympathy toward the one individual – whoever that was – who made the bad decision to create a dangerous condition in the barn, a condition that a simple bit of internet research would have revealed to be dangerous.
Of course I make mistakes, but I haven’t burned 24 horses to death, and if I ever do, I would EXPECT to be shredded on the Internet, and I would not whine about it if I were. Just like if I killed someone drunk driving. Sure, everyone makes mistakes, but when your mistake costs someone else their LIFE, you shouldn’t be patted on the head and get sympathy merely because your action wasn’t deliberate. Your action was NEGLIGENT and negligence results in multi-million-dollar awards in the law all the time – whether you “feel bad” about what happened, or not.
I have to say that expressing a negative opinion about something truly stupid that these people did does not imply anything about the people themselves. I can well believe that they are kind and good people — it’s obvious from the fact that they were trying to keep the baby (whether it was a calf or a foal) warm and cared for. But I don’t think there is anything wrong with pointing out their mistakes and even being outraged if I knew better, even more outraged if THEY should have known better. We all learn from these things.
As for the feelings of the barn owners, I’m sure they are so horrified and upset at the suffering and loss of their animals that they could care less what someone writes on a blog, not to mention busy with medical needs of any survivors (I hope some survived). Do you really think they are sitting around reading internet comments about now? I doubt that there is anything said here that they wouldn’t be saying themselves, if they had a heart.
If they DON’T have a heart, they just might be spending their time checking out comments on the internet and indulging in a POOR ME, everyone-should-feel-sorry-for-me, and why-are-people-hating-on-me, yes-the-animals-suffered-but-never-mind-that-see-how-I-am-suffering? fest.
I have read some harsh criticisms here that happen to be about the same stupid mistakes I myself have made. I am happy I wasn’t the one caught doing stupid stuff, but I did feel embarrassed anyway and changed my ways.
Do I sympathize with these people? Not too much. When you leave a fire source in a barn, the barn may burn. I sympathize for their horses. Do I think they are horrible people? No, I expect that they are good people who paid too much for a simple mistake.
There’s mistakes and there’s systemic mistakes. Not locking the back door once is a mistake. Keeping a key under the flowerpot and telling your friends and neighbours and your children’s friends about it is a systemic mistake.
Sure I’d have sympathies if either was burgled, but one of them had gambled on the fact that it wouldn’t happen to them and lost.
Mmm. That’s the sound of me shaking my head.
I couldn’t disagree with you more. First, the owners did something gratuitously negligent – if I were a boarder I would be suing them. There’s no possibility that any adult could fail to know that a space heater set in straw is unsafe. Since this took place I have had three non-horse people see this article online and write me, their “horsey friend,” asking if it was normal to have a heater in a barn. That’s how stupid this was.
Second, they have given no sign that they feel bad for the horses, only for themselves. Did you read the bit where the owner was saying we could learn from this that life is fleeting and you should enjoy it? Yeah. Fuck you lady. LEARN from this that FLAMMABLE THINGS CATCH ON FIRE when you set HEATERS NEXT TO THEM. I don’t see her giving interviews about how horrible she feels for such a terrible thing she did. I see her blithely playing Lady Special Feelings, in a way that’s unfortunately as typical of Arab breeders as lack of empathy is typical of Big Lick trainers. The pretty flowing-maned horse – is not some magical creature that can breathe fire. It dies when you set it on fire. So grow up and take responsibility for your actions.
Some years ago I was at a barn where a little girl tied her pony without a slip knot. Like all students at that barn, she had been trained properly, she just didn’t bother this one time. And the pony hung itself. It was a terrible terrible thing, and she was right there watching as the horse died from a ruptured trachea. She did feel terrible. And we felt some sympathy for her. Here’s the thing: she was 12. She wasn’t a grown person with a fully adult brain and a long history of successfully navigating the world, but a child with a child’s lack of judgment. And she knew she had done something terrible and admitted it and never went on the news saying that the thing to learn from this was that she should remember the happy times with her beautiful horsie because they were, oh, so brief.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I can look at this and think ‘Yeah, I feel bad for what seem to be decent horse people who lost a lot of horses that I’m sure were loved and cherished.’ The part of me that is a horse lover and owner ALWAYS feels for a caring owner when their horse/s die. But I can also look at this and think ‘If only they had taken a moment to THINK and consider what they were doing.’ I still hold them 100% accountable. The overall underlying moral is still the same: Educate your damn self and if you don’t there is *no one* to blame but yourself. The responsibility is YOURS. It’s sad that it took a barn of 20+ horses to (hopefully) teach these people a lesson about fire hazards.
Ultimately, if the only thing anyone ever did was coddle and say ‘oh, how tragic’ to people who made mistakes that cost them like this, they might not ever learn. Up in the comments someone mentioned about how someone’s barn burned down- and months later they saw the same B.O filling up a heater with kerosene while it was on. What if the first time their barn burned down, all they got were words of sympathy instead of someone saying ‘You could have prevented it.’ ? Of course it could be just simply not caring. I don’t know. But sugar coating the situation just because someone appears as a nice person doesn’t help anyone.
Not related to this comment thread but related to the post- Years and years ago I was working board off at a barn and my boyfriend at the time visited me. I was almost done and so I asked him to blow the barn aisle for me (they used a leaf blower instead of a broom) while I finished up filling the water buckets. I look over and he has it sitting, RUNNING on a hay bale- he had ‘stopped for a moment to check his phone’. The leaf blower was ancient, full of gas, and got HOT- he of course hadn’t given it a second thought but I made SURE he realized exactly what he had done. ( and never had him do anything again ;P ) Often times people only regard a handful of things as fire hazards when there are many things, combined with dry bales of hay, that spell disaster.
Fugs didn’t say she had no sympathy for the barn owners, she said she had no sympathy for whoever put in that space heater. It could have been done without the barn owners knowledge. Just pointing it out.
my comment wasn’t to fugs- it was to the person who basically said ‘shame on you for putting the blame on these owners in a time where they need sympathy.’
This is terrible, I can’t imagine what those poor horses went through. But people are just as careless with heaters and stuff in their own homes, what chance does a barn have?
I am lucky where I live. I live in Queensland, Australia and although it can get very cold (I live on a mountain) it doesn’t snow and my horses have always been happy with a warm dry rug, shelter and hay. I don’t have to worry about subzero temperatures too much. It can get to -2 or -3 (celcius) but that is usually only in that cold period just before the sun comes up.
I used to live/work on a farm/rescue that took in unwanted dairy calves, and had a small herd of sheep, some of which were also rescued. Because some of them had been orphaned or rejected themselves, they didn’t have much of mothering instinct, and would drop their lambs and walk off. I don’t remember a time during lambing and calving season that I DIDN’T have some fluffly little creature snuggled up in bed with me – the calves being unwanted often arrived very weak, and we seemed to have an awful lot of really dim sheep who would have their babies right in puddles and such like. The ones that weren’t weak though, just went in the barn with a nice big straw bed, and we never lost one to cold.
I’ve been pretty lucky at most places I’ve boarded and not had too much idiocy. I spent about eight months at a gorgeous facility – definitely the nicest I’ve ever been at – and for seven of those months, I worked there. It seemed brilliantly safe – no smoking allowed anywhere on the yard, separate hay storage, everything kept swept and tidy. Until I went tramping up to the rug loft one day – big loft that covered the entire main horse barn, full of rugs and old tack and the like – and went round a corner searching for a rug for another boarder’s horse, to come face to face with a giant tank. Thinking it was part of the yard’s water storage, but unable to see where it connected to any plumbing, I asked the owner (an older guy, ex-businessman type who’d started a boarding yard when his kids were into ponies) about it, only to be told that it was a tank of red diesel, for running the tractor. He didn’t seem to think it posed any kind of hazard whatsoever, since smoking wasn’t allowed on the yard, and completely didn’t understand that just because something isn’t allowed, doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Needless to say, I moved my horse within two weeks. Fortunately, so far there’s been no incidents there, but I did hear that the entire barn had to be cleared at one point because the tank sprung a massive leak overnight and stunk the place out. Smell would have been the last thing I was worried about!!
I am going to start by saying that I LOVE my husband. I love him very much. But he is an IDIOT sometimes. We are renovating our barn and most of the structure is at least 50 years old, many parts of it are around 200 years old. He told me that he wants to have a workshop in the barn (it’s a huge building, 40×60 with two floors). I told him that anything he has that might throw a spark needs to get dragged outside so he can use it. I explained to him that hay dust, cobwebs, hay, etc, are all extremely flammable. Then he wanted to put a wood stove to keep the horses warm. I jumped down his throat. Are you TRYING to burn the barn down?! In addition to the horses not needing heat, and that living in a heated barn and then walking out into the frigid winter air isn’t good for them, hay dust, cobwebs, hay, etc, are all extremely flammable. Not to mention that the nice, 200 year old beams holding the building up would probably be toast in about 10 minutes.
I finally agreed to let him have a gym in the front end of the barn (we only have two horses and I get four stalls and a wash stall out of the deal anyway). The condition is that he has to use cement board for the ceiling and walls, and the floor needs to be concrete. That way ANY heat source he has will be contained in the single room. We have wiring run to the barn in a Yankee way – there’s a commercial grade extension cord buried between the house and barn. The ONLY time we have that hooked up is when we are IN the barn. The wiring in the barn is all new, is all up to code, but I am still refusing to take a chance.
The worst hazard I have seen on a barn was at a place I boarded at several years ago. They had huge garage doors on either end of the barn. Which they locked. There was a regular exterior door you could go through. Which they locked. What happened if they weren’t home one night and the barn caught fire? Every horse in there would die. The had unwritten business hours apparently – and that’s one of the many reasons why I left.
I was curious – I have seen a lot of heated tack rooms, with just a space heater in the single room that only had tack, no feed or hay of any kind. Is that still a hazard?
One can only hope that – like with humans – the horses were unconscious or dead from smoke inhalation long before they were in the flames. Fire is my #1 way NOT to die. I also hope that facility has insurance – I know if my horse was there I’d be suing. I don’t know about other states but Maine has a lot of laws around horses to protect facility/barn owners from “I fell off my horse on your property so I am going to sue you” claims. Being negligent (ie, leaving an unsecured space heater unattended in a stall with flammable material) removes any protection given to the owner and opens them up for lawsuits.
Completely off topic, in case someone needs to laugh, http://youtu.be/yMARmYbZ6DY. It’s almost like it was written by you, Cathy!
Nice Arabs, too: well-bred and accomplished. What an unbelievably sad and senseless thing.
I’ve never felt that it was cold enough to warrant heat lamps for calves or foals, although I can think of times when the breeding farm I worked at would use one– generally when there was a weak or sick foal who needed a bit of a boost. However, I raised goats for several years, and frankly you just flat can’t escape the fact that they are born ‘trying to die’. I tried everything, including insulated stalls, but I still had problems with frostbit ears during the winter unless I used heat lamps.
Which brings me to my total confusion on how a heat lamp ‘tipped over’. I went so far as a user of heat lamps to make sure that if for some odd, retarded reason a heat lamp was ripped from it’s wires or chains (the only options for fastening a heat lamp to a rafter– NOT bailing twine!), it would have to unplug before it hit the ground. The lamps were always possessed of a guard to protect from hits, as well as hanging them high enough that the babies couldn’t reach it. At least three feet from ANY surface, including the walls and rafters. ALWAYS dusted off before used. The list is long, and it’s time consuming to check everything, but it’s so worth it. Heat lamps are designed to be used in the barn, but they have to be used correctly. Let’s face it, you wouldn’t back up to your trailer, drop the hitch on the ball, and hit Drive, right? All those little ‘extras’ like locking the ball, plugging in the lights, setting the chains… you do those things, even though they take a little extra time. It’s no different for heat lamps.
It’s also why I would use a heat lamp before I would use a space heater. The lamp is radiant heat, not air, and the lamp can be suspended away from any flammable surface. If you have to have heat, and you take the time to set it up correctly, then a heat lamp is actually the safest bet.
Of course, even safer is to just NOT use one.
There are many different ways a barn can catch fire– the catching fire isn’t the worst part. The worst part is how quickly the fire spreads. Go into your barn sometime, and look UP. See those lovely wires running around your barn? They carry fire along your walls. See how the rafters are connected by nailers for your roof? Those are 2×4 nailers, probably. We use them for kindling, because they light instantly and spread fire quickly. And this is what we have in our barns. Is it any wonder so few horses make it out alive, even when people are aware there is a fire?
OT Craigslist: Seriously?!
http://austin.craigslist.org/grd/2307520205.html
We have a pair of mini horses for sale. One male, one female, not fixed. the girl is very friendly but the boy is a bit independent. They are not old but I am not sure of their age. I can try to get answers to you questions but the best thing to do is just come take a look if you are interested in one or both of these little low milage horses. They have had the run of the property and have not been trained so they do not do tricks or talk or ride tiny little tricycles. Asking price is $350.00 each. If you like what you see then make a reasonable offer. I can deliver to a reasonable distance for a reasonable price. Lets work it out.
We are Camp Balcones Springs, on 1431 near Marble Falls
I have family in Marble Falls Texas. How bizzare. But they dont have horses.
$350 for unregistered (since they dont know the ages of the animals I have to assume they arent registered and therefore have no parentage worth speaking about and may not be under the limitations for height requirements of such) untrained, unhandled minis is rediculous. Minis can be a dangerous handful and hateful little shits if they want to be esp if not trained to even have the basic of manners. I know from experience.
Once again, you and many (not all) of your readers want to point fingers and blame things. I suppose the word “accident” is not in your vocabulary. Perhaps you should look it up. Here are a couple of things to contemplate since neither news story addressed them (and since you want to make up facts again to sensationalize things and somehow put yourself up on some pedestal). First of all, a warming lamp was cited—not a space heater. Let’s try to be a little accurate in your reporting. Facts not assumptions please and try some precision! Now about that warming lamp falling over—there is no report of where it was, how it was fastened (or if) and you simply ASSUME that at 5:20 a.m. the lamp was unattended. Is it not perfectly reasonable to wonder “gosh, did they turn the lamp on and head off to do another chore?” or maybe, it was on a timer. Truth is YOU DON’T KNOW so you shouldn’t be making crap up. You know, you referenced “they aren’t baby chicks”—has it ever occurred to you that perhaps a heat lamp in a chicken house NEXT to a barn could catch fire and it spread. There are so many variables and again, instead of presenting facts and suggesting that people HELP this farm, you want to point fingers and shame, shame, shame.
On a side note, your narcissistic view that “people aren’t reading my blog and paying attention to me” is highly amusing. Perhaps instead of continuously showing that you really are from Planet LookAtMe you could actually provide some kind of truly helpful advice—like a check list of things regularly found in a barn that could cause a fire or reminding barns to have the fire marshall do a walk through looking for potential hazards. I do believe that even one of your readers discussed the idea of spontaneous combustion in hay bales. Truth is, though you can MINIMIZE the risks for a barn fire—any barn that hs electric, hay, hot water, and numerous other normally innocuous items with a nibble of a wire from a mouse or dust missed, a FIRE could happen and NO ONE WOULD BE AT FAULT.
Gosh you know, a long, long, long time before you existed—even before you were a glimmer in your father’s eye—there was a very famous historical event concerning about a lantern in a barn. It was called the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Come now, you paid attention in U.S. history didn’t you: The Great Chicago Fire (please tell me you do know this part of U.S History) The summer of 1871 was very dry, leaving the ground parched and the wooden city vulnerable. On Sunday evening, October 8, 1871, just after nine o’clock, a fire broke out in the barn behind the home of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary at 13 DeKoven Street. How the fire started is still unknown today, but an O’Leary cow often gets the credit. The firefighters, exhausted from fighting a large fire the day before, were first sent to the wrong neighborhood. When they finally arrived at the O’Leary’s, they found the fire raging out of control. The blaze quickly spread east and north. Wooden houses, commercial and industrial buildings, and private mansions were all consumed in the blaze. (hmmmmm—-equipment malfunction, kind of like the hoses that had to spread over 2500 ft and vehicles ran over them, causing damage at the Ohio barn fire—did you fall down and hit your head on the sidewalk which caused you to “forget” this detail or just left it out for sensationalism purposes) Also, WHY EXACTLY did you post their web site? Just for shits and giggles. Where is the begging for donations to help them rebuild—it’s not like they ran out there and threw a match on their stack in the hayloft in hopes of insurance fraud. Do they not deserve sympathy and caring from the equine community? Oh well, I guess when snarky is your claim to fame (by the way, LOVE the article you recently were featured in—it’s priceless!). Let’s not confuse popularity with infamy or infamy with fame. Now for those of you who need to remember our U.S. history, let’s sing that ole campfire song:
Ten nights ago when we were all in bed,
Old lady Leary lit a lantern in the shed,
And when the cow kicked it over, she winked her eye and said:
“There’ll be a hot time, in the old town, tonight!”
Fire! Fire! Fire!
Honey, if you don’t think that barn management should have improved since the 1800′s, I can’t help you.
But I am impressed that you’ve discovered your “s” key exists.
Geez Cathy, have you ever considered that maybe raccoons ran into the barn attracted by the food and heat and undid the saftey ties holding the heater in place and then had a raccoon party and danced around to a mashup of Leonard Cohen and Lady Gaga and in all the excitement knocked over the heater??? HOW COULD ANYONE HAVE SEEN THAT COMING??????
Now please read this extraneous information about another disaster:
RMS Titanic was a passenger liner that struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, and sank on 15 April 1912. She struck the iceberg four days into the crossing, at 23:40 on 14 April 1912, and sank at 2:20 the following morning, resulting in the deaths of 1,517 people in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.
The largest passenger steamship in the world, the Olympic-class RMS Titanic was owned by the White Star Line and constructed at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland. She set sail for New York City on 10 April 1912 with 2,223 people on board. The high casualty rate resulting from the sinking was due in part to the fact that, although complying with the regulations of the time, the ship carried lifeboats for only 1,178 people. A disproportionate number of men died due to the women and children first protocol that was enforced by Titanic’s crew.
Titanic was designed by some of the most experienced engineers, and used some of the most advanced technologies available at the time. It was a great shock to many that, despite the extensive safety features, Titanic sank, and the fact that it sank on its maiden voyage added to the particularly ironic nature of the tragedy.The major loss of life astounded many, and the frenzy on the part of the media about Titanic’s famous victims, the legends about the sinking, the resulting changes to maritime law, and the discovery of the wreck have contributed to the interest in Titanic.
They wrote a song about it, you know:
Oh they built the ship Titanic to sail the ocean blue
And they thought they had a ship that the water wouldn’t go through
But uncles and aunts little children lost their pants
Oh it was saaaad when the great ship went down.
Oh, oops, I shouldn’t have used paragraphs XD
Am LMAO about the raccoons now!
Know what WAS a tragedy and all parties involved deserve sympathy? In 1947 17,188 acres of Maine was burned. It was a single fire that lasted from October 17 and wasn’t declared “out” until November 14. 16 people died.
Because the grass was dry.
No lanterns in a barn, no damaged fire hoses, no space heaters. No one hit an iceburg with a ship because they were going too fast to turn in time.
I feel much worse for the 24 horses that died the agonizing death than I feel for the people who CAUSED the death, even if it wasn’t premeditated. If they have been in business since the 1970s how is it that after THIRTY YEARS they didn’t know any better?
If your child is walking down the street and is hit by a drunk driver do you feel bad for the driver? But the driver just made a poor decision. They didn’t MEAN to do it. They didn’t MEAN to kill your child. It was an ACCIDENT.
Just because it was an accident doesn’t mean someone should automatically receive pity from the rest of the world from the loss that THEY caused. 32% of auto fatalities are alcohol related. The number is 11,773 in 2008. Let’s feel bad for the inebriated that killed people too, right?
If you look at your keyboard where the “QWERTY” keyboard is on the far right side, the third button down says “Enter”. This is how you make a paragraph so people can read your ranting.
http://www.alcoholalert.com/drunk-driving-statistics.html
“Perhaps instead of continuously showing that you really are from Planet LookAtMe you could actually provide some kind of truly helpful advice—like a check list of things regularly found in a barn that could cause a fire or reminding barns to have the fire marshall do a walk through looking for potential hazards.”
Um, if you actually read the WHOLE blog, you would see a link to Fugly’s previously posted blog on just that subject. It is the link titled “The Topic No One Wants to Talk About”.
I have 2 experiences with barn fires. A few years back, my horse was boarded at a huge training farm for conditioning (they had a pool, it was awesome!). I got a call that one of the barns was on fire. It was the longest half hour of my life making the drive to the farm that day. Luckily for me (and Arrow) it was the barn next to ours. The horses were already out of Arrow’s barn ( the siding had melted, the heat was so intense). Not so lucky for the 26 horses that were lost. The fire was caused by a bucket heater that a groom forgot to turn off before leaving for the day. The water boiled away, the bucket melted, the barn burned.
When I was in kindergarten (many, many….many years ago) a barn near my house was torched for insurance money. The doors were padlocked before the barn was burned. I will never, ever forget the sound of all those horses dying in that fire. I feel shaky now just thinking about it, and that was 40 years ago. Maybe if you had ever experienced such a thing, you would understand the lack of tolerance some of us feel for people who use heaters or heat lamps (which are just as dangerous imho). There are so many things that are beyond our control, such as a mouse chewing wire, why take chances with the things that are within our control?
Ditto what fastarrow says.
You can’t have read any of this or you would have seen all of these constructive ideas, not to mention even more in the previous blog on this subject:
hcaspian says: I heat my tack/feed room with an oil-filled sealed heater.
fhotd says: …foal blankets?
OldGreyMare says: DON’T SMOKE… (in the barn).
Sunvalleysally says: (Do not use) …a WELDER while engine running, INSIDE the barn in the barn…
Michy says: …never NEVER EVER smoke in or near the barn.
fhotd says: …how about hanging it (heater) with a cage around it…
Sunvalleysally says: Aren’t infrared “chick” heaters safer? …the cords are industrial/construction type that are impervious to moisture… It is not enough to turn off heaters. You need to UNPLUG them too.
Those are just from the first few comments. In addition, readers have advised, IN TODAY’S BLOG all of the following tips, and I have surely missed a few:
-cover wiring with conduit
-use GFIs
-panel the ceiling to keep down cobwebs
-cover fluorescent light bulbs with protective sleeves
-install a sprinkler system
-turn off lights when barn is unattended
-use timers to turn off lights
-check hay for moisture
-avoid moist combustibles such as hay, manure, wood chips, sawdust and grass clippings.
-store hay separate from barn
-store volatile materials out of barn
-provide access to outdoors for horses
-regularly inspect and maintain wiring and switches
-have fire extinguishers
-have a fire escape plan
-maintain and clean fans
-use equipment designed for barns
-monitor water levels with submergible water heaters
-hang lights and heaters higher than animals can reach
We have been assaulted by a random wall of text! Awoogah! AWOOGAH!
No seriously, I can’t read this. Paragraph breaks are your friend.
OMG, POOR ME showed up. Are they really sitting around reading internet comments?
http://www.sj-r.com/top-stories/x481346387/Dave-Bakke-Horse-abuse-case-brings-out-best-worst-in-people
Interesting. I do think angry, over the top comments don’t help anything, nor do death threats. Although I would take issue with the article saying sites like Fugly ‘throw oil on the fire.’ It’s important for people to be aware of these things. I just wish the commenters here would moderate themselves a little. If you sound rational people take your concerns more seriously.
Very sad. I have used a space heater in my tack room during the wet months (most of the year!) for years. However, I unplug it at night when the horses are in. It is only on when they are out. I also make sure no rodents have chewed the cord…
Now that it’s starting to get warmer (maybe everywhere?), another thing that can cause a fire, which I never even thought about before, are box fans, which I know I saw a few being used at a couple places we traveled to last summer. The problem is dirt and debris getting into the motor, lighter weight cords that can short out, etc. They do make agricultural fans that keep the dust out of the motor, which should be used, instead of the household type.
Barn fire is something I always kind of have in the back of my mind that worries me from time to time with our horse. How horrible.
Generally a calf will not need a heat sorce, but there are times when something extra is necessary. In my case I bring them inside the house. I get the ‘problems’ so this one is more my area, all but two of my cows are other people’s ‘problems’ (generally bottle babies). One spend her first day of life bundled up in my bedroom floor, she would not have made it if she hadn’t been brought in and warmed up. I have never used a space heater in the barn, I have used a heat lamp under supervision (usually to warm up newborn kids, but very rarely), I would never use a space heater in the barn, if I absolutely had to I’d use a heat lamp, very secure and high enough that no animal could reach it.
I was called to a barn fire, not the usual thing for an HO. A bunch of the animals had been burned badly, still alive and the deputies didn’t know what to do. I’ll never forget how the goats and pigs looked that had most of their bodies terribly burned.
Of course the animals had to be put down. It was very sad. One deputy said he could hear the animals screaming as he drove up. One of the deputies went out in the 40 acre field in the pitch dark to find the two horses that were in the barn but escaped. We have great deputies here.
That is the only one I have ever been called to, and I hope its the last.
A farmer up the road from me had his dairy barn burn down not once, but twice due to wet hay. He did the same to when he baled hay for us but I caught it before it combusted. I couldn’t put my hand inside the bales it was so hot.
You may not have a foal blanket available when it is needed, but you can fashion a blanket out of bed blanket, throw, or large beach towel. While I have done this successfully on an adult pony, I have heard that it is possible for the animal to get tangled in the blanket and hurt itself. It has still got to be a lot safer than an electric space heater. I won’t even leave one of those running unattended in my house. If you have one of an appropriate size, you can take a warm shirt or jacket, put the baby animal’s front legs through the sleeves, and fasten it under it’s belly.
You can also build a straw (or hay) cave to shelter newborns. Inside of a shed or barn, make a rectangle of bales set on end, leaving one out for an entry. Puts planks across the top and set bales on them for the roof. My dad did this for ewes who lambed early in bad weather. My sister and I took our sleeping bags out and slept in the new hay cave one rather chilly night and it was quite snug. It would be difficult to get a hay cave big enough for a cow or horse. You might be able to do it with those big square bales. It could be used for orphan foals or calves, or those temporarily removed from their mother.
Uhm we had calves being born in early February, who were completely fine outside in the snow or exposed. There was no need to put them in a barn, they’re made to live out in the elements. Then again I was helping raise Belted Galloways at my university, which are a thick haired Scottish breed. Here’s some pictures of the cattle out for a run in the snow, and one of the babies born in the winter:
just reading the title made me nauseous – having been witness to the aftermath of a barn fire (cattle, not horses….not that it matters in the end) I can still smell that horrid rancid smell…it stays with you. Smell it once – you’ll beat the next person you see with a cigarette lighter in the barn/leaving anything plugged in and walking away while in a barn.
My current BO’s actually go to the extreme of cutting the power off to the barn every night after night check. The tack rooms are heated in the day and that’s it (the barn itself is plenty warm with the horses). No worries about electrical fires/floods from unchecked hoses/horses getting out of their stall and electrocuting themselves if they manage to find a wire/outlet and think it looks good to eat.
As for calves – they’re much hardier than foals as a rule and do just fine in cold as long as they’re out of a draft. Unless it was sickly/extremely premature AND didn’t have it’s momma, there’s no reason to put a heat-lamp on it. They actually make “calf coats” (just like they make foal coats and “lamb/kid sweaters” )for the little ones to wear if needed….pile them in straw after a good feed of warm milk (if they’re being hand-fed) and they stay toasty warm all night long….and with 24 horses in the barn, I find it hard to believe the barn was cold this time of year anyway!
Actually, there were about 40 horses in the barn, which could hold about 50. They rescued 15-18 from the barn, 23 died in the barn, and the horse under the tarp was in the barn and managed to get out to the corral. But yeah, it should have been plenty warm in the barn for any little critter, even if the sides were open (their website says that the horses have a view of the outside). I think it is even more of a tragedy when people that are otherwise doing everything right have something like this happen because of a momentary lapse of good judgement, I read their website wondering which of the horses listed there were in that barn.
Some people near where my friends board kept dumping loads of wood chips, and even though it was cold and rainy, the piles got hot enough make clouds of steam. The boarders got nervous and complained, so now they don’t pile it up so high, or near the barn.
I used to visit a friend of a friend, who had a large property with several horses and other farm animals. It bordered on some parkland. The property had plenty of space cleared around it, but when a brush fire struck the area, there still wasn’t much they could do and lost everything, (but they did evacuate the animals to safety.)
We used to get on their case because they were kinda lazy about removing manure. Often the manure was swept into corners and along sides of the fences where it would dry out, and eventually decompose back into dirt.
I saw the place after the fire. They had corrugated steel run-ins and aluminum sheds and there were holes in the metal, around the bottom, everywhere the manure had been piled up!
Don’t think just because you have metal barn, it can’t burn.
I was at a horse expo last month and a group of us were eating dinner by the stalls and one of our group said, “I can’t believe that guy is smoking!” HUH?!?!?, I asked her to repeat it and when I heard it again, I whipped around the corner, saw the cigarette and “politely” told the young idiot, “Excuse me…there is no smoking in the barn.”
Now, understand I’m prior military and my body language is such that the kid got this “OH CRAP” look and snuffed it out…course the dumb @$$ snuffed it out on the sole of his boot…over a pile of hay (Sigh). Course, later on, in another aisle he was kabitzing about how it’s in his right to smoke… Thank God I didn’t hear that first hand because I would have then “politely” ripped his head off and, well…you get my drift….
Oh, one more thing…
I’ve also got the cajones to tell a stable owner, here in Qatar, to snuff it out…this I did do politely but I was aghast. He looked at me, smiled, and did as asked and I never saw him smoke with me in the area again.
The stables here are basicly all cement, the only thing wooden are the doors and maybe the front walls…but, like someone said earlier, there is still hay…
AND, this fire has given me food for thought on my barn…The main hay will be stored in a separate building….and, trying to think of a way to have an easily accessable fire hydrant since I’m out in the middle of no where….
My yet-to-be-built barn is in an area without a fire hydrant. The county requires the installation of a 10,000 gallon water tank in case of fires. Is there a pool or large fountain near your barn? If so, you just need a pump and hose.
If your barn owner is rich and the place is really fancy, start telling him stories about the beautiful place you saw with the pool/fountain/sprinkler system, whatever. Maybe he will want to keep up with the Sheik next door.
There are also space heaters now that turn off if tipped over. I have one at the office where they keep the thermostat super cold. If it isn’t fully upright, it will turn off – and I mean if it tilts just a hair like if my foot touched it.
We have a little ceramic heater that is like that, which is great, because I have young children. Also, the only place on the heater that gets hot is the front where the heat radiates out, which is nice, because I was able to place it on top of the TV to keep it out of reach of my boys. I still turned it off at night. We don’t usually get that cold during the winter here, and our apartment is a second floor apartment (heat rises, so when our downstair neighbor was home this winter, we didn’t need heat). It did actually get cold enough here to need the heater, so we got the little one, but it was turned off at night, and of course, the time we really needed it was the snowstorm at the beginning of February, where it actually dropped into the negatives for the first time in 35 years. But then, our electric company was caught with their pants down, and were doing rolling blackouts to keep a massive blackout from happening. Thank goodness some food places were on theri list of necessary places to keep open, because when the power went out that morning, I bundled my boys up well, popped them into the double stroller, and we walked to McDonald’s for oatmeal (fortunately the one by my house was still powered up, the others weren’t, and I wasn’t the only one who had the idea to go there for warmth and warm food. My four year old enjoyed playing with other kids in their pjs in the play area, lol).
The place where my friend boarded her horse had dirt floor paddocks with partial roofs as stalls. The only time they used bedding was when they bought a rangebred mare in foal, and they used starw for the foaling stall, otherwise it was rake the poo out, dig out the pees spots (stinky, phew. Manure on dirt doesn’t smell that bad, but that notrogen will knock you over), and even out the floor and you’re good to go. I helped out there in exchange for riding and unofficial lessons, my friend helped out to pay part of her board, so we both did a lot of mucking, and hay stacking, and cleaning water tanks, and grooming and mucking stalls, and when my friend’s horse had his bout of sand colic (he would attack his hay and get it all over his pen, and then end up eating sand with hay. She gave him psyllium, and starting putting his grain on top of the hay, so he’d eat the grain first and be calmer when he got to his hay. He stopped being so messy and actually started putting on decent weight) they called me when they couldn’t reach her right away (they reached her while I was heading out, so she was there when I arrived, her parents said when they told her she was flying out the door, getting dressed as she went), and I walked him around and around until she could scrounge up money for a vet visit (he knew and trusted me. He was kind of a resc ue in her hands. When she bought him, he was a little crazy, couldn’t handle a bit, was scared of men, and was generally a little mind-fried after being a ranch horse (he was a Quarab gelding, and fairly sensitive). She sold him after she joined the Army out of high school, and last I heard he is running barrels and having a blast. She rode him in a hackamore the entire time she had him, and bareback for most of the time, and was calm and patient with him, but didn’t let him get away with stuff.
That’s a great feature but remember…..the heating unit will stay pretty hot and could very well ignite any combustible material it touches. I certainly wouldn’t want to hold a heater in my hand that was running for a hour or two!
–Susan T
This post is totally OT, but very much part of what this blog is about- I woke up this morning to an email telling me that one of my old horses is for sale. Unfortunately, I am not able to afford another horse at the moment
I’m trying to network my butt off to find my former mare a great home, yet again. If you’re near N. Fl and have room for a 14.3hh brown Anglo Arab whose been there and done that for several teenage girls, please let me know! This mare has done everything from HUS to Western Horsemanship and reining on the local 4-H circuit. She’s not always a top placer, but she’s one of those that’ll try all day long. She’s an amazing trail horse- the fastest walker I’ve ever ridden, including gaited horses. Not afraid of anything! I even trickrode on her. She’s safe for hippodrome, cossack, all the fenders (including Faye Blackstone) and vaulting, as well as under the neck (she’s awesome for that because of her narrow neck), and she’s ok with tail stands and crupper vaults through the trot. She tries her heart out for whoever is riding her, and I’d hate to see her in a less than desirable home or worse, shipped. Jenny (the mare) is probably 20 or almost there now. Her only faults are conformational- pigeon toes. I saw her this summer and she looked awesome.
She’s being sold because her owner only rides her sporadically. If she needs a “tuneup” I’d be more than happy to donate 30 days of riding to whoever buys her. They’re asking $400 for her, which also scares me. my email is brianne . baum @marykay.com
That is so sad.
Calves do JUST fine in the cold weather – I have never personally owned cattle, but my boyfriend has been around them all his life and I have also been around them and worked on a dairy farm before. A lot of calves don’t even have shelter – they MAY have some trees to shelter them, but farmers generally want flat and clear paddocks, because it makes it easier to work with when sowing crops so a lot of the time they don’t even have trees to hide behind and I am yet to see one die from cold.
My bf’s uncle has paddock calves and sheltered calves – the sheltered calves are less prone to scours, but even THEY don’t have a heater! They have some sawdust and are MOSTLY protected from the wind, but I assure you, calves can and do live healthy lives in the paddock – they do not need a lot of shelter or a heater. The only reason this calf would have needed a heater was if it got off to a bad start in life (was ill or had fallen into a cold dam ect).
I feel so sorry for the owners of these horses – I couldn’t imagine how guilty the person who left it on must be feeling. Everyone has dumb moments – I doubt this was done out of malice. I think the point is though that regardless of whether it was a mistake, the intentions behind it don’t count. The horses still died =(
http://www.operationhorserescue.blogspot.com
At my previous barn we had a firefighter come out and give us a safety course. It was great, he went through the barn with us, pointing out potential hazards, checking our escape routes etc. He showed a truly stomach-turning video of how barn fires typically behave (the stuff of nightmares!), and talked both about what to do in case of fire, and how to prevent. I didn’t know before that blinking light fixtures actually are a fire hazard. The “strobe-light” isn’t merely annoying, it’s dangerous. So go change those old tubes! We finished off with demonstrations, getting out of the barn when it was filled with smoke (man, that was scary) and practiced with a fire extinguisher.
A safety course like that is absolutely to be recommended, and especially a good idea at barns with lots of horses and several boarders.
When I was younger I would spend so much time doodling and “designing” my own barn, and I always pictured having a fire safety system regarding the stall doors. I have no idea how feasible or expensive this would be, but I would investigate it if I’m ever lucky enough to build my own own barn. Goes something like this:
Every stall would have a good-sized run-out paddock. At the back of the stall, the usual sliding door. But the sliding doors would be power-operated, so that you could hit a button and open all the doors at once. This would be handy just on a day-to-day basis, so that if say all the horses are brought in during a freezing cold night, it would take just a push of a button to open all the stall doors to let them into their runs, instead of having to go into each stall and open them. (Automatic closing probably wouldn’t be a smart idea, unless they had a sensor so they wouldn’t close on a horse or person.)
Anyways, power doors could be wired into a smoke detection system, so that if the smoke/heat alarms go off, all the doors open automatically, so the horses can escape the barn.
There is that myth though, that horses won’t leave a burning barn because they associate the stall with safety. (Where did I get that? Black Beauty or something? Some story about having to blindfold horses to coax them into leaving their stalls during a fire…) I wonder how true that is. I am doubtful… but thankfully I have no personal experience with barn fires.
I suppose a sprinkler system would be just as good as my automatic door idea, though…. but it would still be handy, I think.
Although I have to say, from my personal experience as a property manager, sprinkler systems are very expensive, a pain in the butt to maintain, and they tend to have weird problems that make me suspicious of their safety. One building was dripping a mysterious thick black liquid from a sprinkler head. Our own office building’s system starting making spooky rumbling noises as the system was attempting to pressurize itself… turned out it was spewing water (or whatever is actually in the pipes, there’s a mixture of some kind of antifreeze) from a broken spot in a utility closet, and the sprinkler company took WEEKS to manage to fix it, meanwhile we had to keep mopping up water in the closet and watching as the water was erratically spraying all over electrical panels. !?!? I was terrified it was going to short everything out but nobody seemed to think it was a big deal. All these problems in buildings which are only a few years old. The sprinkler people who come to inspect and repair seem to have little idea what they’re doing. Maybe it’s just one bad company, but it doesn’t make me feel super confident about the sprinkler systems in general.
husband’s workplace was out of kilter for a couple of weeks because the pipes for the sprinkler burst after freezing during the recent bad snowstorm in February. They had been having issues for a couple of weeks before, but it hitting -6 at the location did the pipes in, and they burst all over the cafeteria’s kitchen, and on down to the main water input. They froze because the pipes were never insulated (we don’t usually get that cold it, it MIGHT get cold enough to snow once or twice a winter, this was a freak 35 year cold). It was on the agenda to be fixed, but was always bumped down the priorit list. And guess what they did when they rebuilt? Didn’t insulate the pipes again, but again, this was a freak occurence. So yeah, a sprinkler system needs to be properly installed and maintained to be effective, otherwise, you can end up ruining the place. Thank goodness my husband came up with a way to continue operating without their kitchen (it was warm enough the next week, that he was able to use outside grills, and they didn’t do anything from the fryers), or everyone would have been out of work for the 2-4 weeks it took them to fix it.
One thing I remember from reading HI back in the 80′s was the recommendation to put firewalls between every few stalls to help slow down the spread of a fire, so all my dream stables included those.
Whitewolfe001….your model barn sounds like you’ve thought long and hard about creating a safe place. Just remember, though, that even if the stall doors open automatically, horses may freeze and refuse to leave, associating the stall with safety. it happens over and over again. Horses are rescued from the burning barn and if not secured to prevent them from returning, they do and they die.
I’ve never experienced a barn fire. I pray that I never have to. But i learned about a technique to coax a horse to leave his stall– blindfold him, turn him in a circle and then he will lead out.
You run on pure adrenalin when caught in such a terrifying event.
–Susan T
Here in Alberta we use calf warmers like this one. http://www.polydome.com/calf_warmer.html
I would never use a heat lamp in the barn, you’re just asking for trouble.
We have raised cattle for years and only one time have we ever used a heater on a calf……. My husband went out one morning to check the cattle and found a newborn calf IN THE MIDDLE OF THE POND! Of course, it was about 5 degrees outside and snowing, so it looked hopeless, all you could see was the top of her head and nose above the water……he waded out into the middle of the pond, pulled her out, and we brought her into the house and started working on her. I set up a heater in the laundry room, but I was there the whole time with her……I would never set up a space heater in a barn and go off and leave it!! We named the calf snowflake, and believe it or not she made it. Her temp started out at less than 90* because it wouldn’t even register on the thermometer, but with the hearter and lots of warm blankets, within a couple hours her temp popped back up to the normal 102*. She made a full recovery and we renuited her with her mama 2 days later, and she is doing well now………I actually blogged about the ordeal and took lots of pics. Here is the link to the blog page about Snowflake:
http://horsefilleddays.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-is-she-still-alive.html
this is right by my house – it was absolutely terrible. i know a lot of people who got horses there, and they weren’t exactly the best place
I don’t raise calves but I know a lot of people who do, including a guy I used to buy my alfalfa from (until he plowed it all under to plant corn, dang it….). He brought me a roundbale one cold day and had a calf on the floorboard on the passenger side of his truck with the heater going. The calf was warm, safe, and by the end of the day was warm and strong enough to rejoin his momma. I know people who have brought them into porches, laundry rooms and bathrooms as well. They seem to not need much time to either recover or not and all these options are so much safer than a heating source in a hay-filled stall. Sure, there will be clean-up afterwards, but I’d much rather have some scrubbing to do and all my animals be safe.
Whenever I do have to place clamp lights or heat lamps in a stall I always secure it with zip ties. I never, ever, ever trust that the clamp is going to hold it alone. I place them up high enough that the horses can’t reach it and zip-tie that sucker in 3 or 4 different places. Plus, I always make sure they are cleaned off and the shavings dust doesn’t get too thick on them. That might be going overboard but it bothers me when I see thick pine dust on a hot lamp–it’s unlikely but you never know what might cause a fire.
Regardless of what a stupid mistake this was, I really feel terrible for everyone involved. It’s heartbreaking.
I live about 30 minutes from this barn, I seen this on the news 2 days ago and knew it would appear here. Too much stupidity not to show up here. We were also trying to figure out why there was a heater on a baby animal when the weather has been above freezing night and day. We have never heated a calf. And if it was indeed a foal, we’ve never heated a foal this time of year. There was one news channel that showed video of surviving horses being led out. Be warned that the horse is severely burned. http://www.local12.com/news/local/story/Horses-Die-in-Morning-Barn-Fire/z_5kPPi4TEaovY66NvzZ3A.cspx
OT, but I came across this today…apparently Florida has passed a bill (SB1246) which makes it illegal to photograph a farm without written consent of the owner. This applies to photos taken from the road.
Here is the article from the Fla Trib:
http://fltrib.com/photographing-cows-or-other-farm-scenery-could-land-you-jail-under-senate-bill
And apparently it was voted into law this past month:
http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2011/1246
WTF????
There is a VERY scary movement afoot to stop us from exposing animal abuse…I hadn’t seen this one but I need to blog about the whole thing in general…this and laws against taking undercover video footage are scaring the FUCK out of me.
I just have to wonder what motivation Sen. Jim Norman has for proposing this bill in the first place. Who is he protecting?
Look at the other bills to make it illegal to covertly video farm operations…this is a very, very scary thing that is happening.
He’s protecting industrial farming, big companies like Smithfield, Tyson etc.. He has probably been given large sums of money, or other percs to do so.
Lack of common sense = lives being lost and in most cases its horses that can’t do anything.
Common sense= lives being saved.
Remember that one barn that had those 4hers (I think that’s what they were, they were teenagers) whose barn burned down because an OLDER MODLE space heater tipped over and burned down the barn. COMMON SENSE would have told someone to throw it out and buy one at Walmart for a very expensive price of what $10? One that if it tipped over it would shut off. And now another barn burns down because of someone’s stupidity. How about bringing the calf home and INSIDE your home? Or would that be to much effort? Even I know you NEVER leave one of those livestock heaters/heat lamps on unsupervised. Because my common sense tells me they could possibly start, oh I don’t know, A FIRE! All I have to say is this. I’d bring an animal home and either make room in my garage or home and make sure the animal was warm that way. Or I would even sarafice an old hoodie and put it on the calf/foal and make modifications where necessary to keep the animal warm that way.
I also don’t buy the ‘knocked over’ crap for one second. Should have been properly secured. How to test it? Act like/think like the animal. Just like safety proofing your home for a baby/toddler.
I just hope the horses died of smoke inhilation rather than being burned to death……
And now they are getting donations to help them…Uh, shouldn’t donations go to help victims of, say, hurricanes or wildfires, things they couldn’t have controlled?
http://www.horsechannel.com/horse-news/2011/04/07/ohio-arabian-barn-fire.aspx
I wondered the same thing! Why on earth should I donate to rebuild their barn that they stupidly burnt down? Why should I donate hay to the surviving horses when I could donate hay to a legitimate rescue? Plus, this is a boarding barn, they had to have insurance on the building to legally take in boarders. All of it should be covered. Why should I or anyone else give them money? And to top it off, their boarding fees were high for this area. So they were making plenty of money. I guess they were high since they were a “show barn” but still… no way would I give donation dollars and/or hay and feed to this.
Well, I am glad I am not the only “meanie” here…
I mean, if you didn’t insure your horses and property, how is that my fault? I had an uninsured driver hit my car that I only had liability on about 10 years ago…GUESS WHAT, I had to go buy another car. No one took up a collection for me. I recognized that I had been pretty stupid thinking I wouldn’t get into an accident (I had nothing to do with it, I was stopped in traffic and was rear-ended) and so the price of that stupidity was having to buy a new car out of my own pocket. That’s LIFE!
I would donate.
When I was young, the trailer I was renting caught fire. The heater tape on the water pipes fried. I lost everything. I had renter’s insurance but that doesn’t come through the next day when I still have no place to go, no money to just go out and put another deposit down on another place to live. Things like that. If it wasn’t for people donating clothes, blankets, cat food and litter for my cat and a little money so I could get a hotel for a couple days, I wouldn’t even have been able to make it to work. I would have had nothing. I would 100% donate to these people. I don’t care if it was Warren Buffet’s barn that burned down. If I was there at that moment, I wouldn’t care about all the money he has. If he didn’t have it when he needed help, I’d help.
Where I live now, I go to the local gas station for a cup of coffee every morning before work. There is a donation jar there with a teenager’s picture on it. He was riding his four wheeler and it flipped over on him and after 4 months, he’s still unconscious. Am I to assume that they are rich just because the kid had a four wheeler? I mean, it is a luxury item. I guess I just choose to help rather than judge is all. I put in a $1 every day. It’s not a lot. But it would add up.
It’s not the horses fault this happened. I thought you people were for the horses? If you people are so willing to donate to rescues and so on, why not this? The only reason horses are at rescues or in bad situations is because of people…just like these horses are in this situation because of people. What is the difference? It’s still horses needing help because PEOPLE put them in a bad situation.
Your house burning down was an accident and beyond your control. That is a completely irrelevant example when comparing it to THIS barn fire. If this fire was arson, caused by old wiring that had passed inspection but sparked anyway, or some other freak accident, I would donate if the funds were needed. However, the barn burnt down due to stupidity. My daughter is 5 and knows not to leave a heater in a barn unattended. These people will have insurance money eventually. Until then, I see plenty of pasture in the pics to support the few survivors, plus they have boarders that pay the advertised price of $350-$400 a month. That price is according to their craigslist ads. They have the money to cover the expenses until insurance comes in.
To whoever posted that the farm is not asking for the donations… The news station here said that an account has been set up in their name at a local bank for deposits. I guess that means they could refuse the funds, but I dont see that happening.
I would donate to individual owners for help with vet care on the surviving horses. The boarders most likely were not resposinsible for the heat lamp. If a boarder did set it up then the BO should have seen it when they checked all the horses that night and removed it.
“The Arabian Horsemens’ Distress Fund (AHDF) is collecting donations”
I have yet to read that the actual barn owners involved are asking for donations. They can easily turn down the help offered by AHDF, and The AHDF can always keep the money for other disasters relating to their mission. Just because an organization has a fund and collects donations for you, doesn’t mean you asked for it or have to accept it. There’s a big difference between an agency collecting and offering when they think you are in need, and personally asking for someone to collect or give money for you.
But you know that doesn’t make the owners look bad when you look at it this way, that they can easily turn the donations down in acceptance that it was their fault, and that would make your blog look bad.
“But you know that doesn’t make the owners look bad when you look at it this way, that they can easily turn the donations down in acceptance that it was their fault, and that would make your blog look bad.”
I would be delighted to have the blog look bad, and have that money saved for people truly in need through no fault of their own. We’ll see if that happens.
Sorry, no time to read all the comments, but has anyone thought about insurance fraud in this case?
Well, you never do know. There certainly have been cases where that was proven to be the cause of a barn fire.
I can’t of course speak with certainty, but I doubt it in this case. I don’t know the farm but over the weekend at Equine Affaire I talked to several people about it and I think several of them did know the owners. Never heard a whiff of a suspicion. No guarantee, but I don’t think so.
On another note, years and yeas ago a friend had a young gelding for sale. Some people from a local barn came to see him, and were wanting to buy but dickering on the price (and he was priced very inexpensively to begin with). My friend turned them down. A few weeks later their barn burned and a big deal was made of the fact that most of the barn’s residents were boarders but one (I think) was theirs. My friend often wondered if the gelding dodged a bullet. He didn’t seem to be the type of horse the daughter was showing and she wondered if he was going to maybe be a “sacrifice”. We’ll never know but it’s scarey to think it’s possible.
Saved from the butcher
Standardbred shows gratitude by winning 25 in a row
Standardbred St. Elmo Hero can thank his breeder for giving him the chance to race in stakes instead of being turned into steaks. And what better way to show his gratitude than by winning all 25 of his starts, including his last race at Woodbine last Saturday, to earn more than $200,000?
St. Elmo Hero
Rescued by breeder
What happened was this: St Elmo Hero’s Illinois breeder, Carl Becker, got wind that the new owner of his 2-year-old colt and his mother, Crystal Cricket, was going to send them to the slaughter house because the mother is an unproven broodmare. So he launched court action to recover the pair, which he was able to do for an outlay of $700.
Becker gelded the colt and entered him last July at the age of four in a bottom level $7,000 claiming race at Balmoral Park in Chicago. His horse was claimed out of the race and has simply become a pacing machine since, winning everything in sight. Kind of a “brink to the bank” story. Watch for him again soon. Harness horses generally race every week.
How interesting that one of their stallions names was Oasis Ablaze….. hmmm
We just had electric put in our barn. All the outlets, every single one, is GFI. The 4 fluorescent lights in the barn isles have ballast tubes protecting the light tubes. There are 2 lights in each stall, each is mounted high and caged. Each stall has it’s own light switch. Each stall has a GFI outlet installed over the rafter at the front of the stall for heated buckets or fans and each of those outlets is operated by an individual light switch. All the switches are located well away from the stalls so a horse cannot turn them on or off. ( I have nosey horses.) And all the switches are labeled to identify what they turn on or off. There are no outlets in the stall area that a horse can reach if it gets loose. There are no wires in stalls or barn isle that a horse can reach. All electric wiring is in metal jacketed conduit, no exposed rubber coated wires that are open to rodents or horses to chew. Cords for heated water buckets are run through PVC pipe so that only the part at the very bottom of the bucket is exposed. Even my 16 gallon heated tub in the paddock is wired GFI to a switch in the barn and the cord is covered completely with PVC pipe. I got rid of my old fans this fall before the recall, I only use them 3 years and purchase new ones. Unless the motor is totally encased the dust collects on the motor and can start a fire. Old fans get taken down, blown out with an air hose and packed in garbage bags each fall. I try hard to remove dust and cob webs from rafters and near lights and outlets every spring and as often as I think about it. There is no electric at all in the hay storage area, no lights and no outlets and the floor is cement. Also since our barn is on a hill above the level of our water supply we don’t need to worry about heating the frost hydrants to keep the pipes from freezing, all water back drains to the house and the pipes are empty after buckets are filled during the winter freeze. So no heat tapes or space heaters needed for the pipes. I did think about one thing I have to do this spring, replace all the stall light bulbs. They get dust covered, hay dust burns. So there will be clean light bulbs in each stall at least 2 times a year or more if they are needed. None of use in this family smoke, and we don’t allow smoking in or near our barn or garage.
I was a volunteer fire fighter before my son was born. I couldn’t count the times I helped put out field fires caused by someone throwing a cigarette out a car window. Acres and acres burned by someone’s carelessness. Barn fires that smoldered for days because of old hay left inside. House fires caused by careless smoking, unattended candles and space heaters, not to mention un-attended cooking. Thankfully I was never at a fatal fire. I was at my job and couldn’t leave on the day the Golden Retriever left home while his family was on vacation died in the fire that destroyed his home and I am thankful that I wasn’t there.
My husband is still a volunteer Firefighter and a paid Firefighter in a large, very populated area of Maryland. He has seen all kinds of stupid human tricks when it comes to fire hazards. The county he works for has Fire Inspections done yearly by the paid firefighters. He has come home and told me about many of them. Boxes piled in front of fire exits, oily rags and cleaning supplies stored right next to ovens and furnaces, locked on the inside emergency exits, sprinkle systems disconnected and totally non-existent fire alarms. And he’s been on his share of fatal fires.
Neither one of us wants to be on a barn fire at our own barn. We tried hard to make it safe. I really hope we did.
Will the fire department do an inspection upon request? Is it free?
Yet another reason I keep my horses pasture boarded, how HORRIBLE!! My heart goes out to those poor horses and their owners.
Im appalled with the fire hazards at racetrack stable areas. You have several grooms packed into tack rooms at the ends of each barn with propane heaters, coffee makers, etc, and cooking with propane grills right next to huge stacks of hay. Not to mention water heaters often left on all day to cook oats, or the many many many people who smoke in the barns. I had a very scary incident coming back to the barn later one evening. Looked down at the other end and saw a HUGE flame shooting up the stall wall. The grooms had put a bucket heater in a bucket full of corn to cook, and had LEFT. The water boiled off, heater destroyed the bucket, and the hay rack RIGHT above it had caught fire. I screamed for help but nobody was even around. Grabbed a hose and doused the flame down enough to unplug the heater and then was able to put out the rest of the fire. It was all over before anybody else got there. I shudder to think what might have happened had I not shown up when I did!!!
This is timely. Yesterday, a pickup truck pulled up at the barn I ride at and four people piled up and started heading for the barn door…and two of them lit up.
It’s not my place and technically not my responsibility, but the words ‘don’t smoke in the barn’ came out of my mouth without any thought.
One of them snapped ‘I never do’ back at me (turns out he’s a friend of one of the students and had come to watch her ride), and they stood in the parking lot smoking. If it had been my place, they would have been standing on the ROAD smoking…the parking lot is too close, especially as the barn doesn’t have a sprinkler system. (One of these days, hopefully, the money will be found to install one, but as the barn also has leaks in the indoor and the aisles and stalls could use reflooring…)
But the barn is not heated. There are space heaters in the apartment (nobody actually lives there, but it’s used if somebody has to stay overnight to deal with a colic case or the like, office and bathrooms. They are brand new, are bolted to the walls and are turned off when nobody is there. I firmly believe that all space heaters in barns should be bolted to the wall firmly enough that casual contact will not tip them over.
If I was designing a barn:
1. Sprinkler system. Definitely. (And my indoor would also have one of the rain style mister systems that doesn’t leave puddles after watering, especially in this climate…you can turn those things on while riding and keep yourself and your horse cool. I love the idea of those things).
2. Fire extinguisher at the end of every aisle, also in the arena. Checked and maintained regularly.
3. Any space heaters used would be bolted to the walls, at above dog/cat/rodent reach height.
4. No smoking on the PROPERTY. Not just in the barn, but ANYWHERE. Also, if there was a parking lot, it would be against the rules to sit in your car with the engine running to stay warm…that’s a spark hazard too.
5. Separate hay and bedding storage…and manure heap. (Also, manure heap would be covered, as open manure heaps cause pollution issues).
And besides. MY horses would only be IN the barn if I was about to do something with them. I am a firm believer in 24/7 turnout for all equines.
I also wonder how hard it would be to get a fire hydrant set up immediately outside a property that has livestock. If the worst DOES happen…
This happened in my area – about 15 mins from where I live. Was wondering if it would make it to the blog. I don’t know these people at all (not my breed or discipline), but feel sorry for them. People at work keep asking me if I knew those horses and say I don’t, and then wind up explaining how dangerous it is to put heaters in barns. So, I’m very sorry for these people, and sorry it wasn’t prevented :\
Terrible, terrible. There was a barn fire at a rental string many years ago. I will never forget watching the news and as the reporter was talking to the camera, behind the reporter, someone was carrying a horse head on the end of a hay hook. It was burned almost beyond recognition but I knew what it was. Stuck in my brain.
My mothers space heater runs almost all the time. It will stop if you even bump it but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t short out. We had one in our trailer that starting sparking and it wasn’t even on. I think I’ll start unplugging my toaster oven and coffee maker.
Also I want to add, make sure you do a back ground check on your new potential employees. I was part of a barn fire that killed 17 horses at a Saddlbred training/show barn. It was caused by a new employee that had past issues with fire and was pretty much deemed a pyromeniac. He started the fire with fuel that was stored in a utility room INSIDE the barn that had a weedeater, mowing and other utility stuff insdie it. He doused rags in gas, lit them up and stoked it with the saw dust on the floor. That barn was old, not well built with poor wiring, lots of hay stored in it and lots of other fire escape hinderances, the barn when up in flames and was gone in less than 30 minutes. It was a 25 stall barn with makeshift stalls added on the ends. I helped care for the survivors of this fire and it was horrible. It was exceptionaly hard on most the survivors for many of them havent seen the great outdoors in nearly thier entire lives. Bug eyed and next to compleat hysteria the horses were led through an open feild to an ajoining farm where I worked as Weekend manager. Some just stood in the stalls of the barn (the temp barn) staring at the ground tembling with total fear and shock. Some adjusted well and some were on the brink of total emotional/mental colapse. Some were in pain due to burns and broken up hooves (wich were long and shod with show shoes). The sight of the burned barn and dead (still smoking) horses is forever etched in my mind not to metion the smell. Its traumatic to horse as well as human. There was another barn on the other side of town that housed 45 horses that burned down and ALL of the horses died in that barn (except for 8 horses housed in a shed row type stall makeshift away frm the emediate barn.) It was caused by a fan being left on at night and over heated catching on fire. I had been to that barn many times and it ws also warn down, full of cobwebs, and I dont think the fans had been taken down and cleaned in years. Maintenance can also be a good fire deterance.
I do floor drawings of barns I design for fun, EVERY barn I draw has fire escape back doors in thier stalls.
I am the Alphamare and I am a Cigarette Nazi.
The no smoking zone on my property starts at the front gate — and at every inch of the exterior fence. I will NOT hire anyone who smokes, no matter how much they assure me they won’t smoke on my property — because sooner or later, they will probably convince themselves it would be okay “just once.”
I know I’m extreme; I don’t care. I know, from watching others go through it, that quitting is incredibly difficult. I admire anyone who makes that effort. But no smoking means no smoking.
I’m totally upfront about it. I tell anyone that if I find they have smoked on my premises, they are gone. No second chances.
I adore cement block barns. I really really hate fire.
I agree with your policy, and I don’t think it is extreme.
Most years we have at least one calf we have to dry off and warm up. This is what I do;
We have a nice sun room with French doors so it’s easy to get a calf in. I push most of the furniture across the tiles into the other room, it’s easier than it sounds. Then I roll up the rug and drag it out. Put down old blankets and lay the newborn on them. I dry them down with towels and space heater close by. I’m with them till they dry. Once they are dry you don’t have to have heat on them. I’ll use a hair dryer as well to speed things up. A healthy calf just needs is his mother to dry him off. If they have to be brought in there’s something going on that’s not good usually like the mother is dead or the calf is sickly and can’t get up…this usually ends bad. Sometimes with twins the mother walks off with the first one to get up and leaves the other behind. We had a heifer run off and leave both before they could get up or dried off. We brought them in. A blind cow had her twins in an icy puddle and they almost froze to death. We brought those in.
Soon as the calves come around they start to get up and look for their mother. They crash into anything hoping it’ll let down milk. This is when you either put them back with their mother or their own little place if their an orphan…they don’t need heaters, just shelter from the wind and grub. People do very stupid things..I wonder if the space heater was on the floor near the calf? Like I said, you know when the calf is up because of the racket of everything they are knocking over in a desperate search for mum.
Wanna know something even more stupid? It was only about 40 degrees over night the night of the fire. Not nearly that cold for any animal with fur (actually, a pretty comfortable temperature).
I actually know this family and barn. I’m not going to lie- I don’t feel badly for them. I feel horrible for the horses, the clients, and boarders, but this family has always been negligent and truthfully I’m not shocked it happened. What the news doesn’t say is that this isn’t their first barn fire, it’s just the first time that a real tragedy occured.
A friend of mine used to board there (before the fire, she moved last year). She’s repeatedly told me stories of stalls not being cleaned for days and meals being skipped. The barn that burnt was not their only barn. They have roughly 60 horses on the property. The barn that burnt also held their indoor arena, which also housed about 10 temporary stalls. These people have more horses than they know what to do with. Don’t get me wrong, their Arabian lines are fantastic and they truly do take the time to shown and train them- but they seriously overbreed and don’t have the room to comfortably house all of them. It’s not at a hoarder stage, but it’s overcrowded.
They moved their daughter’s horse to where I board mine, so that they could use his stall to put in some of the rescued horses (he lived in the other barn). And so that their daughter could continue training and be ready for show season. She obviously wasn’t upset or shaken up enough that she could say some snarky comments about my horse, my tack, and my riding. I’m sorry, but aren’t we being extremely generous by allowing you to move in here the same day your barn caught fire?!
Her friends started taking up donations also as well as asking for grooming supplies, halters, leads, pitch forks, hay, etc. because they lost so much. How about no?
I do feel very bad for their boarders and leasers. I also have a friend who was leasing a young Arab mare and she was one that died. I feel like in a boarding barn you should be EXTRA careful about things, because it’s not just your horses, it’s dozens of other people.
We have lots of rules about heaters where I board. We aren’t even allowed to have heated buckets. Only stalls without windows can have automatic lights, and the timers must be set so they can only be on from 8am-8pm. Same with fans. Only allowed on during the day.
Very tragic for what has happened, but yet so obviously preventable.
“I actually know this family and barn. I’m not going to lie- I don’t feel badly for them. I feel horrible for the horses, the clients, and boarders, but this family has always been negligent and truthfully I’m not shocked it happened. What the news doesn’t say is that this isn’t their first barn fire, it’s just the first time that a real tragedy occured.”
Thank you. I always appreciate the first hand accounts when I am being accused of being unfaaaaaaair.
Sorry, not being unfair. Just calling it like I see it.
Cathy,
This blog isn’t about educating people about horses at all. It’s about teaching people how to harass and bully. That is why you put contact information out there. If people want to contact all the people you have put on this blog since you started, surely they are smart enough to find that information themselves. You could spend time letting people know how to approach a situation that looks bad and see if it’s really some shit bag just abusing horses or if it’s someone who has gotten way over their head, ect. You could have taken this story in a different direction to make it educational. You could have shown why people shouldn’t put heaters in barns and show alternative ways to keep young animals warm. Instead you choose to belittle people, who might be really good people, but you don’t take the time to find that out. Bad things happen to good people. They make mistakes. I’m sure these people with the barn fire probably learned from it. Unfortunately they learned the hard way.
You are bitter and not doing any good. You say your blog has helped horses. If it was YOUR blog that helped the horse then why are all the articles and pictures from someone else’s work? One moment you say this is a educational blog, the next moment, mostly when someone disagrees with you, you say it’s your opinion and this is your blog and your right. If that is the case, leave the educational part out of it. Education and Opinion do not go together.
You are bitter. You proved it right here:
fhotd says:
APRIL 7, 2011 AT 10:07 AM
Well, I am glad I am not the only “meanie” here…
I mean, if you didn’t insure your horses and property, how is that my fault? I had an uninsured driver hit my car that I only had liability on about 10 years ago…GUESS WHAT, I had to go buy another car. No one took up a collection for me. I recognized that I had been pretty stupid thinking I wouldn’t get into an accident (I had nothing to do with it, I was stopped in traffic and was rear-ended) and so the price of that stupidity was having to buy a new car out of my own pocket. That’s LIFE!
So since people didn’t help you replace your car 10 yrs. ago, they shouldn’t help these people either. That doesn’t make any sense.
Oh, good heavens, it was merely an example from my own life about a stupid decision that I WASN’T and SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN compensated for. You are entitled to your opinion, as always, but you totally misread my reason for posting it.
I wasnt going to reply to this because I am not a Fugly defender, nor a regular commenter. Ive commented several times recently since she has posted topics that have literally hit close to home, with gaited horses and this local barn fire. I do read it everyday though.
My opinion here is that this IS indeed her blog. I have learned alot from this blog. So therefore it is educating someone. I love the bitchy snarky opinions although I dont agree with her always. It shows passion for what she is preaching. Her freedom of speech covers her giving the information any way she pleases, whether it is one sided, with no facts, completely scientific, or something she completely made up after alot of tequila consumption. Welcome to the web. If you dont like it, dont type it in your address bar. Your only adding to hits per day and her popularity by coming here to complain.
Welcome to the web. If you dont like it, dont type it in your address bar. Your only adding to hits per day and her popularity by coming here to complain.
Touche and SHHHHH! Old mares need advertising income!
But yeah, as I’ve pointed out many times – observe the area next to your head – no gun. If this blog offends you, click the button that looks like this <—- and go somewhere that makes you happier! I recommend icanhazcheeseburger.com
My heart goes out to these folks.
I am in the process of building/designing my own small horse operation.I plan to have each stall open to the outside paddock with a dutchdoor access that is kept open at all times. On the wall opposite the dutch door is a sliding door that will be used to get to the stall.
The barn is wood and I’ll be using electric fence. Hay will be stored nearby but in a different shed. We get occasional wildfires.
Anyone see any inherent dangers in this setup that I should modify?
The first thing that comes to my mind is to make sure your property has a firebreak, as you get wildfires. The local fire department should be able and willing to advise, but the big thing is to keep brush clear back to a certain distance from the barn.
I’m designing my barn too. Your description makes me wonder about electric fencing and fire safety. What special precautions are necessary when using electric fencing? Has anyone ever heard of a fire caused by electric fencing? Now I want to know about that.
As to your barn design, have you read the previous blog about fire safety? There were lots of tips there, and if you read through the comments here, there are many good ideas for your design, including sprinkler system, fire extinguishers, smoke detectors, encasing all electric wires in metal conduit, and fire breaks every few stalls (where the walls separating the stalls go all the way to the ceiling to slow down the progression of fire). Several readers have brought up the danger of cobwebs, which did not even occur to me, so if your barn will have open rafters or complicated truss designs, you will need to clean and dust frequently because cobwebs are very flammable.
If you have to use electric fencing (and other than keeping horses off the fence, I don’t much like using it), then make sure there is at least a six inch gap between the barn and the fencing posts, and run a solar charger. They are more expensive, but won’t leave you with a fire hazard in your barn. Years ago, I had an electric fence hooked to a lean to via plastic insulator (nail on type). I heard it snapping super loud, went to look, and a large grasshopper had landed on the insulator, creating a ‘jump’ between the wire and the nail/metal siding. It was rhythmically frying itself, complete with lovely flashing ‘snap’ every second or so. NOT a good thing, especially if wood were close by.
Also consider that if you are making ‘runs’ out from your barn, you will have electric fencing pretty close on both sides of the horse, unless you can design your barn to allow for wider runs. A better alternative might be a higher fence, with one strand of electric that only impacts them if they start trying to lean over the fence– normal walking would keep them from being shocked if they bumped it by accident.
After reading all of the comments here, I gotta say I’m glad my mare lives outdoors now. This was our first winter living out, and I was worried at first but she’s come through it all just fine and for the first time ever her feet are great! That’s from walking around, which is necessary for healthy hooves. My BO is a self-proclaimed electrical nazi, and I used to be consternated that she didn’t allow heated buckets in stalls in winter or to a lesser degree, box fans running all night in summer. But even so, I’ve seen scary things like hay piled up very near a light bulb in her barn. Things that someone wasn’t paying attention to, and she can’t be everywhere.
There was a barn fire in our area last week where five horses were lost, a fancy barn that I couldn’t begin to afford. The cause has yet to be determined.
Other people have mentioned that their horses have access to the outdoors from their stall. After having realized that my horse can survive a winter just fine living outdoors, I don’t think I’ll ever leave her confined to a stall again.
When it is all said, discussed, and forgotten, there is only ONE way to ensure your horse doesn’t die in a barn fire: Don’t lock him or her in a stall in a barn.
Run in shelters are cheap, easy to maintain, and have the added advantage of allowing horses to choose WHEN the weather is nice enough to be out and when they prefer some cover. I have actually never heard of a horse burning to death in a lean -to shelter. It’s the only sure way to make certain your horse is safe.
My dream barn will have ‘wide’ stalls, with long runs and doors that are always open to the outdoors. Each stalled horse then gets a nice long pen that gets them away from the barn, in case of fire. Yes, they might panic and stay in their stalls, but I doubt it– most horses who aren’t locked into stalls never get that image of their only safe place being in the barn.
My main use for a barn will be to provide a screened area so that my horses can be away from the flies during the hot part of the day when the bugs are bad, a refuge with clean air when we have bad smoke in the air from distant wildfires, and a place to keep them after I bathe them and before I ride. If I could accomplish that with a run-in shed, I would, because my horses are very happy with their pasture.
It would be great to have a run in shed that was completely screened, but I can’t think of any way for the horses to go in and out at will without letting in the bugs too.
Also a place to get out of harms way during lightening storms.
Lightning.
Lightning scares me too– I’ve had several acquaintances lose horses to lightning strikes, and it’s really heartbreaking.
I have sort of compromised in my barn for now– my horse stalls are latched with pretty flimsy materials– a horse slamming into them would break them open pretty easily. I happen to have rather calm, laid back horses, so I pretty well figure they will stay in unless something really bad is going on to cause them to hit the doors. No idea yet if this is a good thing or not– we will see.
Bugs I don’t compromise on– I get out the insecticide, and premises (hmmm sp?) spray to back them off. Or I used to– now I have swallows, who eat their weight in bugs every day. Very useful little birds.
Another bug solution is to hang cattle rubs, and put some fly repellent on them– the horses quickly learn to brush off bugs by bumping into the hanging rubs.
I tie after baths for an hour– otherwise my horses roll in the sawdust, which is almost as bad as the dirt!
Smoke is more difficult to avoid– can you create a screen of small evergreen hedges (find nontoxic varieties) to plant near your facilities? That will help, if not actually solve the problem.
the barn near where my grandparents lived burned to the ground because some idiot (there’s stronger language for this type of person, but I can’t type it here) teenager decided to throw a fire cracker into the barn to scare the horses. The fire cracker landed on some hay left in the aisle and the barn ignited. 17 horses were killed including several lesson horses that had been there for years. It was so sad. I couldn’t even go by the barn for months.
I heard about this horrific fire last week.
Back in the late ’70′s there was an epidemic of racetrack barn fires throughout the nation. LIterally hundreds of horses were burned to death. Some of the fires were deliberately set. Others were the results of irresponsible grooms leaving heaters on unattended or carelessly smoking. I was a caring citizen/horsewoman who followed a committee put together by the Thoroughbred Racing Association and the National Fire Protection Institute. Sadly, after months of review and recommendations, many racetrack barns are still not mandated by law to have sprinkler systems–equipment that would drastically reduce the scope and intensity of a barn fire.
A friend of mine told me about a barn fire he witnessed first hand and tried desperately to help to save the animals trapped inside–horses and cows. He still has nightmares to this day. Horses don’t whinny when terrified. They scream. He can still hear the screams.
I simply don’t understand how people can be so lackadaisical about something that should strike fear in their hearts and motivate them to be obsessive about safety measures. This was a very large barn. I simply cannot believe it wasn’t equipped with sprinklers and the hay, straw, shavings and other combustibles kept in an out-building at least 50 feet from the main barn!!! I know the owners of the property are probably in an anguished state but this tragedy was preventable. It wasn’t worth the risk to keep a heater in the barn. And, it’s really about priorities. When it comes to some things, people would rather spend money on expensive training and show equipment and esthetics than insure the safety of the animals housed inside by providing life-saving fire suppression systems.
Back in January, 1996, Prestige Arabians in Cannon Falls, Minnesota suffered a horrific barn fire. 10 fabulous Arabians were lost including the great stallions Wisdom, The Chief Justice, Street Dance, LF Fifth Avenue, and Peter Conway’s fine upcoming sire, The Ironman. Lori Conway’s wonderful multi-National Champion Half Arabian Mare, Hucks Prowletta V, also perished. Lori risked her life rescuing clients horses and lost her best friend, Pro. Her story relates the heart-stopping frenzy of ripping heavy plastic insulation off a side door in order to provide egress from the flames. Balajkar V, her wonderful stallion, stood calmly and patiently beside her, without a halter or lead rope as she struggled to open the door. A fireman grabbed a newborn foal and struggled through deep snow drifts carrying that baby to safety. The temperature was 40 degrees below zero. Lori (Mangan) Conway states emphatically that even IF you have an orderly barn, with halters hanging on every stall, fire extinguishers every few feet, procedures for quick action, and you hold fire drills a couple times a year, NOTHING…I repeat, NOTHING prepares you for the real, terrifying event. The pandemonium and terror can either paralyze or cause you to focus with laser intensity.
Here in Northern California in 1990, what was believed to be a carelessly discarded cigarette, caused a small fire in the Oakland Hills which turned into the worst urban wildfire in history. Over 3,000 acres burned, more than 1,000 homes destroyed and TWENTY-FIVE PEOPLE DIED. The toll in wildlife and beloved pets lost was heartbreaking. The winds that day gusted to over thirty-five mph. Investigators said that the temperatures at the core center of the fire exceed 2,500 degrees–incinerating everything in its path. It literally was a tornado of fire.
We’ve all suffered a minor burn or two. It hurts like hell, doesn’t it? Imagine a helpless horse or other creature trapped in a barn or surrounded by a 200-ft wall of flames in a wildland inferno? I would rather have my horse outside in a loafing shed, in bitter cold, than have him locked up snug in a stall in a barn that could, due to a freak malfunction, or deliberate carelessness, turn into an a crematorium! I have a very vivid imagination and I can tell you that it is very disturbing to imagine what these poor horses suffered. I pray God was merciful and smoke overcame them before the flames reached them.
I was pretty graphic and morose here but maybe we all need to think about the unthinkable.
Please! Be vigilant. Think about your horses’ safety at all times. I just learned about six Thoroughbreds that died in a freak trailer fire while in transit to a racetrack in North Carolina. We can’t prevent every occurrence, but an ounce of forethought can prevent tons of charred wreckage and the chilling silence of once vibrant, inspiring equine friends.
Think about it and think about it often.
–Susan T
~ a voice for the voiceless ~