Race to shelter animals from the Los Angeles wildfires January 12, 2025

People walk with their horses after they were evacuated from the Eaton fires, at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Burbank, California, on January 10, 2025. (AFP)

By AFP - Agence France Presse

Race to shelter animals from the Los Angeles wildfires

By Paula Ramon

BURBANK, USA: When the wildfires began to spread on the outskirts of Los Angeles, Janell Gruss had to leave immediately. But as the manager of a stable with 25 horses and other animals, she knew it would be tricky.

While some people simply got into their cars and drove out of the danger zone, Gruss had to deal with more than two dozen frightened horses, while embers raged in winds of 160 kilometers per hour.

“The last horse we had to get out of the stable... it was pretty bad,” Gruss told AFP at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center, where hundreds of animals were taken this week.

“There was a lot of smoke. It was dark. I couldn't see where I was,” she recalled. “Both the horse and I were tripping over things, branches, whatever was on the ground.”

Gruss said that cornering the animals was so challenging that, at one point, she feared she wouldn't make it out alive.

“I thought I might have been one of the victims,” she said, as tears streamed down her face.

“You hear about the person who goes in to get the last horse and doesn't come out.”

More than 150,000 people have been forced to leave their homes because of the huge flames that are ravaging the city, in a tragedy that has killed at least 16 people and changed the face of Los Angeles forever.

With so many people being forced out of the way of the advancing wildfires and needing to take their animals with them, service capacity is being reduced.

“We've never seen anything like this,” said Jennie Nevin, director of communications at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center.

“The first night was very busy and chaotic. A lot of people came from everywhere.”

Animal care

Dozens of people crowded into the barns on Saturday at the equestrian center, where donkeys, pigs, and ponies also found shelter.

Tarah Paige, a professional stuntwoman, brought her three-year-old daughter to visit her pony Truffles and her miniature cow Cuddles - a TV star who has appeared on several shows.

“It's been a whirlwind,” said Paige, for whom the equestrian center has been an oasis amid unimaginable catastrophe.

Nevin says that there has been a great deal of support and people offering their services to help look after the collection of animals.

“It does take a village,” she said. “It takes the community.”

Throughout the Los Angeles area, there are activists, veterinarians, and volunteers working to rescue and care for the animals that were left homeless in the tragedy, including some that were injured.

The Pasadena Humane Society has received around 400 animals from Altadena, where the flames have already consumed more than 14,000 acres (5,600 hectares).

One of their patients is a five-day-old puppy who was found in the ruins of a building with its ears burnt off.

Annie Harvilicz, founder of the Animal Wellness Center, says she hardly slept all week.

As the fire spread through the upscale Pacific Palisades neighborhood, Harvilicz posted on Facebook that she was happy to take in animals.

The post “exploded”, she said, and dogs, cats, and even a rabbit started arriving.

With the flames still out of control, the calls for help didn't stop.

But, she thinks, even when the firefighters have put out the blaze, the slow-motion tragedy will continue.

“There will be more pets found, more pets injured, with smoke inhalation and burns that we will start to discover when the fire dies down,” she said.

“This is just the beginning.”

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