Horses evacuated to Pierce

Equestrian Center temporarily houses horses om wild re

More than 25 horses owned by Hidden Valley residents ordered to evacuate due to the blazing Springs fire were taken to Pierce College’s Equestrian Center over the weekend.

As a school with the amenities to keep horses on campus, Pierce plays a part in a network of Southland facilities that work with emergency crews and haulers to aid with large animal evacuations, according to Betsy Connolly, a horse science instructor who helped organize the evacuation.

“We all coordinated because we know we can’t keep people safe unless there is a plan to keep their horses safe,” she said. “Horse owners will not leave their precious horses behind.”

The 28,000-acre Springs fire, which spread across Ventura County, damaged 15 homes and resulted in mandatory evacuations, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Art Gallery Director Monika Del Bosque lives in Newbury Park, about a block away from where mandatory evacuations began, she said in an email. She said that she voluntarily evacuated twice due to the blaze.

“I could have gotten very afraid about losing my possessions, but it’s just stuff in the end,” Del Bosque said in the email. “I was more concerned about how it would have impacted my children and their loss of possessions. But for me, it’s just material goods. Everything is replaceable in the end. The things that aren’t—they’re fleeting.”

Meanwhile, at the Equestrian Center, a map was set up by a registration table to help identify where each horse was kept. Horses were catalogued and assigned ID tags for organization. Also, stalls were zip tied, and buckets of water were set up for each enclosure.

Connolly said that the evacuation alert was issued at approximately 2 p.m. on Friday, May 3, and that shortly after, she received the call to start the temporary sheltering process.

“[The fire and sheriff’s departments] made the decision to open up Pierce,” she said.

The threat subsided sometime around Saturday evening, and the horses were taken back by the haulers Sunday.

“Fortunately, the weather cooperated once the sun went down,” Connolly said. Though the school provides the evacuation site facilities, LA County oversees the process.

“The county has jurisdiction. We just worked for them,” Warner said.

Student and faculty volunteers worked with an emergency evacuation team to keep the process of sheltering the horses as smoothly as possible. [See HORSES, page 3]