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EVACUATING YOUR BARN IN A FIRE (page 2)
Making an Evacuation Plan:
Evacuation is the most difficult task you will have in the
event of a fire and there are no set rules for how evacuation will be accomplished. Each
facility is different, so an evacuation plan must be designed specifically
for your barn. There are many questions that have to be answered in
order to create an efficient evacuation plan. For example: Which exit
door should I use? If that door is blocked, what other door should
I use? How do I lead a horse out if I'm partially blinded by smoke? Which
pasture should the horses be put in? Where should I park my car to
keep it out of the way of firefighting apparatus? Which horse should
be the first one evacuated and why? Read the article by Frank
Hicks, Jr., Developing an Equine Barn Escape Plan, which offers straight-forward
steps to take to create your own escape plan.
Your plan must include each horse’s location in the barn and where
each horse is to be evacuated to (pasture, neighbor’s barn, tied in a secure location). A
number of factors should be considered when you assign each horse to a stall. For
example, put a nervous or high-strung horse, a weak horse, or the oldest horse
near the exit door because they may be the most resistant to evacuation. The
stalls for other horses (stallions, pleasure horses, yearlings, broodmares with
foals at their side) will have to be determined by the layout of your barn. Some
of these horses require special handling on a day-to-day basis.
Once again, I want to stress that horses must be led out in
case of fire or they may attempt to return to the perceived safety of their stalls. If horses
revert to survival instinct and they panic inside a building, they may crash into
other horses, people, and doorways, and if they go down, other horses may trip
over the first fallen horse, causing a pile-up with disastrous results. If
it’s at all possible, once you take a horse from its stall, the stall door must
be closed. This is a situation in which it helps if there are people leading
horses out and another person closing stall doors as soon as the horse has been
taken out of the stall.
When it comes to a discussion of halters being worn in the barn, be
aware that differing views on when or where horses should or should not wear halters
all have valid points and decisions have to be made depending on particular situations. So,
if your horse does not wear a halter while in the stall, the halter, with a cotton
lead rope attached, should be hanging on the stall door or right next to it. In
addition to halters already in the barn, Andrew Lang, D.V.M., suggests keeping
a stash of halters and lead ropes in a place near the barn where they can be grabbed
in a hurry.
What about the horse who won't leave the stall? If attempts
to get a horse to move fail, you must leave him behind. That's a brutal statement,
but if fire conditions worsen and you are unable to safely evacuate the horses
still in the barn, either because they have been cut off from safety by the fire,
are already down from smoke inhalation, or due to their refusal to leave the stall,
you
must—and this cannot be stressed enough—YOU MUST LEAVE THE BARN AND DO NOT
GO BACK!
It is critical, in fact, to remove youngsters from the area
if it looks as if animals may be trapped. In the midst of a fire it may seem "noble" for
a youngster to try to rescue his or her horse--nobility in this instance is a tragic
bit of fiction. One way to help children through the emergency if they
are on the scene is to assign them a job, such as guarding a pasture gate if horses
are being evacuated to that location. The job can involve opening and closing
the gate as horses are brought to it, which can save precious minutes for the adult
rescuers. Another possible assignment for youngsters would be keeping
the barn dog (on a leash) or barn cat (in carrier or other container) a safe distance
away from the barn and firefighting activity. A note of caution regarding
barn dogs and cats: if you are a stranger to them you must be very careful in a
rescue attempt. Please read Slim Ray’s article, Reigning Cats & Dogs,
that follows this article. It was written for firefighters who are called
upon to rescue animals, but the information is important for all of us.
Children, though, may not be your only re-entry worry. Adult
horse owners may attempt re-entering the barn if they haven’t yet seen or been
able to evacuate their own horse. Firefighters have all too often removed
the bodies of people who safely escaped a burning building only to re-enter it
to look for a pet or personal valuables. You don’t want this to be the case
with someone you care about—or yourself.