EVACUATING YOUR BARN IN A FIRE
This is why many animals die in fires:
- Lack of sprinkler systems to extinguish a fire while it is still small and hasn’t yet produced fatal amounts of toxic gases
- Debris or equipment in aisleways and stall bedding that adds to the fire fuel load
- Halters and lead ropes not easily accessible
- Horses or other animals that are hard to catch, hard to halter, and hard to lead
- Animals confined in small enclosures in large factory farms where there are no sprinkler systems and not enough employees to evacuate them
- Animals trapped beneath a fallen roof who are injured or killed by the heavy, burning, falling debris.
The majority of animals who die in barn fires die of smoke inhalation. Their first reaction is often to try to climb a wall, as in the case of horses, or to scale metal pipe enclosures as often happens to pigs in factor farms, in an attempt to escape. This often puts horses and cattle, particularly, right into the heaviest smoke, since smoke will spread out along the ceiling if there is one directly above the stalls or stanchions (as in older bank barns). If any part of the barn is open to the roof, and the flames have not broken through the roof, allowing smoke to vent, the smoke and all its toxic components will continue to push downward towards the barn floor. All too often a fire smolders for awhile, releasing toxic gases that kill the barn occupants before anyone even realizes there is a fire.
With horses, if they are accustomed to leaving the barn via a runway, it's possible that as soon as stall doors are opened, the horses will leave the barn just as if they were going out to pasture. My horses were trained to exit and enter the barn through a short runway. Having accustomed them to this practice, I'm pretty sure they would leave the barn in this manner in an emergency if I remained calm and opened stall doors as I usually did (see A Helping Hand--or Hoof). But don't assume anything. Always be prepared to lead your horses or any other animals out of the barn.
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 my animal(s) out if I'm partially blinded by smoke? Which pasture should the animals 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 that should be adapted for the kinds of animals you keep.
For horses, 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. This precaution should also be followed with any animal you must lead, rather than herd, out of the barn.
