For hunter and equitation trainer Kate Considine, Tuesday started out great. A lack of precipitation in the Los Angeles area meant lessons hadn’t been rained out in ages, but that day the Santa Ana winds picked up, so she canceled riding at her Willow Brook Stables, which is based out of Flintridge Riding Club in La Cañada Flintridge, California.

“I was like, ‘Great. My daughter’s home from college. This is fantastic; we get a ‘wind day,’ ” she said. “Then the fires started popping up.” 

As the day went on, she was glued to the news to see which way the fires would go, and she started getting a foreboding feeling as the fires spread and evacuations orders grew. Her own home in Sherman Oaks seemed to be out of danger, but she started to worry about her horses stabled at the Flintridge Riding Club. Around 2 a.m. Wednesday, the city reached out to the riding club to say it would be imposing a mandatory evacuation in a few hours for residents, but that they should start evacuating the horses immediately.

Considine and the staff sprang into action. Three shippers with trailers started loading horses from Willow Brook and the other stables at Flintridge amidst whipping 80 mph winds.

“The horses were phenomenal,” she said Thursday, recounting the experience. “We had no power, no lights, and we’re loading the horses in these winds, with debris smacking us in the face, with the lights of our iPhones and our car lights guiding us. The facility, being prepared for the fire, had run fire hoses from the water outlets. There were these white, iridescent, snake-looking fire hoses, and I was like, ‘The horses will never cross these.’ Those horses didn’t care. They stayed right at our shoulder.

“You wouldn’t take them out in these conditions ever,” she continued. “The wind was howling. I washed my hair yesterday, and I was pulling rocks and twigs out of my scalp [from blowing debris.]”

Considine had called the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Burbank and arranged to evacuate her 26 horses to there, while others from Flintridge headed to the Paddock Riding Club in Los Angeles and Pierce College Equestrian Center in Woodland Hills. Considine then sent her 19-year-old working student Lulu Mykytyn ahead to LAEC to receive the first load of her horses while she and other staff loaded the rest. The trailers made the treacherous drive from Flintridge to Burbank several times until all animals were safely moved.

“When I was driving to the barn to start the evacuation, on the highway I saw three different collisions where people had abandoned cars,” Considine said. “Not even to the side, but still in the lanes. I saw two cars that had trees on top of them crashed on the side of the road blocking the freeway entrance. You could get around it, but you had to be a little clever. Driving from house to barn and then barn to LAEC, that was the scariest. Some people have power, some traffic lights [are working], and some [aren’t]. Some are going cautious at 5 mph; other people are driving like lunatics at 50.

“To say that it felt apocalyptic,” she added, “is putting it lightly.”

To make matters even more complicated, several cellular towers in the area had burned down, and while Considine’s phone was working, her assistant’s phone couldn’t take calls, and some of her clients’ phones didn’t work at all.

“Customers are calling me today, saying, ‘Oh my god, we’ve had no cell; we’ve had no nothing. We just got all your messages,’ ” she said. “One of my customers who had to evacuate called me today crying, saying, ‘I knew I never had to worry; I knew you had everything taken care of. Dealing with so much else, it’s just nice to know that they’re looked after, they’re good, they’re taken care of.’ ”

Working Together

Luckily for Considine, DaMores Tack And Feed—which supplies Willow Brook at Flintridge—is located near LAEC, and got hay, grain and shavings over to their temporary home by 7:30 a.m. Once those supplies arrived, Considine and three grooms kept working.

“I’m 50, and I haven’t bedded and hung water buckets since my 20s, but boy it comes back,” she said. “We got them all bedded, watered, fed and handwalked, with bran mashes with mineral oil.”

At one point the relentless wind stopped for a moment, and Considine said she started crying. Ramon Cejudo Guzman, who has worked for Willow Brook for 26 years, asked her why.

“I said, ‘Because the wind stopped. Because right now I think we’re going to be OK,’ ” she recalled. “For the first time in 13 hours, I think we’re going to be OK.”

While evacuating the horses Considine remembered to grab necessary supplements like Prascend for her charges and add them to her equipment truck, which already was packed with water buckets, feed buckets and the like, ready to head to a horse show. She added longe lines, crates of boots, her own helmet and boots and that of her assistant Stephanie Underwood before transforming her car into a tack trunk, squeezing in 30 saddles and scooping up bridles by the armload to dump into the back.

Considine had tremendous praise for the team at LAEC, the trailer drivers and the staff from the feed store. And she had special praise for the team at Flintridge, led by executive director Kevin Basham.

“They really helped coordinate and counted [horses],” she said. “I’m running through the numbers. I was like, ‘I’ve got 14 left. I’ve got six left. This one’s having trouble loading; OK, put it to the side and get another one on.’ Everyone’s moving and trying to keep track to make sure everyone gets off. One trainer is like, ‘I’ve got one left,’ and I said, ‘I’ll get her to you at L.A.’

“It’s a real group effort. It’s a real community effort,” she added. “I don’t know who, maybe L.A. Equestrian Center, they had a little golf cart driving around yesterday afternoon with French fries and chicken nuggets and Cokes. That was the nicest thing. I was like, ‘This is the best French fry I ever had in my life.’ ”

Looking Ahead

On Wednesday night Considine’s home in Sherman Oaks was packed full of friends and customers who evacuated—as well as six dogs who were quartered in different rooms to avoid squabbles. Underwood’s house in Pasadena was covered with ash, and the water isn’t safe, so she and her husband are devising a plan to keep themselves and their 8-month-old baby safe.

“We’ve got two customers who lost their homes,” said Considine. “I know a trainer—Cha Cha Jago who has Jigsaw Farms—she lost her home [and her barn]. So we’re luckier than most. I’m just grateful.”

With the horses safely settled in at LAEC, Considine called her veterinarian on Thursday to start developing a plan for how to keep them healthy. He recommended that despite the unhealthy air quality at LAEC—the Air Quality Index was 167 that day; the U.S. Equestrian Federation recommends horses not be ridden if the AQI is 150 or higher—she let the horses move around a little bit because it could be worse on Friday. So she, her staff and her daughter, Katalina Considine, home on break from Texas Christian University, took each horse out for handwalks and a little trot on the longe line.

As the fires continue to rage, Kate isn’t sure what’s next. Many—but not all—of the Willow Brook horses were planning to go to the Desert International Horse Park in Thermal for that circuit at the end of January.

She’s been told that Flintridge Riding Club survived the fire, but the water currently is unsafe, and the air quality is poor, so heading back there immediately isn’t a given. She’s considering taking all 26 horses to Thermal, where at least they can stay in work. She acknowledged that while LAEC has been wonderful, it’s not a long-term solution.

“I’d thought this morning we’d be back in Friday or Saturday, but it really depends on the water and air quality,” she said. “I’d love to have a plan, but I’ve got five potential plans. I’ll move and shift with the information and the weather.”

Click for more information on how to assist equestrians impacted by the Los Angeles fires.