Spreading Like

On Sunday afternoon, I was riding in the covered arena when I saw smoke pouring upward from just a couple of properties away from the barn. I stopped TC and watched as flames engulfed the hillside by the barn and begun to spread rapidly.

Flames on the hillside next to us, there are
mountains behind that smoke

The good news is that the fire ended up passing our barn while we all watched with bated breath and talked about what barns had room for the horses and made sure enough rigs were hooked up to begin evacuating. We were all glad we were spared from having to evacuate.

It was pretty terrifying, watching the fire spread in real time, seeing the flames so close and leaving nothing but black hillsides behind it. But let me tell you, Cal Fire is absolutely incredible. Literally seconds after I noticed the smoke, they were dumping red flame retardant on it from planes and the firetrucks were whizzing down our road ready to fight it. If only our publicly funded police were as good as our publicly funded fire departments.

I have to say that my horse is an absolute trouper, I had a decision to make when the fire began, do I finish my ride or do I just get off. I chose to finish my ride and he handled the sound of planes, helicopters, and sirens blasting overhead and down the road by the arena just fine. I then walked out and he let me video and take pictures of the fire from his back.

The fire started over there, view from the covered
arena

Even though we didn't need to evacuate (this time), I still wanted to put together a fire plan and print it out for my trunk. It's been a long time since I lived this far from my horse. Honestly... I can't remember being this far from my horses ever. But the SO needs to live on the peninsula and other than the barn situation up here, I like it way better than living down near my horse. So I'm a solid 45 minutes door to door to the barn. That's a bit scary when I watched this fire cover so much ground so quickly. If it were only up to me to get him evacuated, I might not make it.

Luckily my rig is hitched up and at the ranch, so even if I'm not there, my rig is and TC gets in that easily. So any one of my barn mates could snag him and another horse. However, my truck keys are in my locked tack room, so I think during fire season, I'll find a different place to put the keys. When I figure that out, I'll write that into the fire plan, as well as any directions for how to use my truck.

My next step would be, where to take him. My parents place currently has an open stall, so when the fire broke out, I told my mom to brace for the most obnoxious monkey horse to come stay for a while. In my fire plan is going to be the address to my parents' place, the gate code to get in, both parents' phone numbers, and I'm also going to print out a map with directions just in case.

My parents know what he eats well enough to take care of him and even if I'm not there, I will probably be on my way and able to meet them there. But I'll probably print out care instructions for him to leave at my parents' place anyway. Just on the off chance that the SO and I are somewhere without signal, it's good for my parents to know how to take care of TC without me being there.

The amount of smoke was insane

One of the things I'm very happy about is how easy TC is to trailer. The fire made me realize how unbelievably important it is to have a very easy to load horse. I have another slot in my trailer and access to three additional rigs for a total of 13 horses that can be taken off the property. Obviously my helpfulness has a limit, it'd be silly to waste 45 minutes trying to get a horse in the trailer when others will load right up and it would hopefully not come to that, but it could be life or death, right? The easiest to trailer horses are the ones who are going to leave the property first. I'm glad that mine is in that group.

TC self loads easily, even under pressure, even if someone has no idea what they're doing. You point him at a rig and say the words "load up" or even just gesture toward it, and he hops right in quietly. I'll be putting directions in the fire plan to help people know how to put him in and to assure that he loads easily so he is not left behind.

Headed away from us, phew

Generally it was a bit scary, but knowing I had a place to go, a hitched up trailer, and a horse who loads easily gave me such peace of mind. I knew I could be off the property in ten minutes if necessary.

I'm so grateful that it didn't come to the barn, but it's still such a bummer that it happened at all. So far, no one has been hurt and only two structures have burned. We watched it get dangerously close to two houses in those hills but it passed them both. Not sure what happened on the other side of the hills as it moved south. When will people learn that fireworks are illegal in this county FOR A DAMN REASON.