By Ayah Ali-Ahmad and Tina Low
Recently, record-breaking fires have spread across California and neighboring states, burning millions of acres so far. With the SCU Lighting Complex and fires east of Cupertino closely spreading along Los Gatos and nearing San Jose, residents prepared for evacuation, with some making additional preparations for their animals.
Senior Skylar Ploshay, who started horseback riding at a young age, had to make such changes. She was first introduced to bareback riding on her aunt's 400-acre ranch in Livermore. Recently, a wildfire near that region burned over half of the land — the fire stopped just 30 feet away from Ploshay’s aunt’s horse stable and cabins. To ensure her horses’ safety, Ploshay’s aunt had to move three of them from her ranch to another stable in Placerville, where she keeps two other horses.
"They just live off the land, and since they just graze there and all that was burnt up, she has to bring them down to Placerville in hopes that fires wouldn't reach there,” Ploshay said. “[The fires] never did, which is great."
In Placerville, Ploshay’s aunt was able to collect enough resources and hay to feed the horses. However, she doesn’t know how long it will be before they can return to the ranch in Livermore until they assess the damage to their property.
"No one knows how it's gonna work out, so my family and I are all just saying 'anything you need help [with], let us know,'" Ploshay said. "They just got to do a thorough sweep, but the place is so big, it's gonna take some time to figure it out."
After Ploshay began riding at this Livermore ranch, she started taking lessons at Whispering Creek, Cupertino, where she now works and is responsible for the care of six horses. Among these horses is Jericho, a horse she got almost eight years ago. For her work, Ploshay is responsible for five of the six during evacuation.
In case of fires spreading close to Whispering Creek, Ploshay says they have a rough evacuation plan. With her many horses, she is worried that if they ever do evacuate, she won't be able to move all of them in time.
"We had an evacuation plan set up and everything," Ploshay said. "But we didn't have to go through with it, which was fabulous just especially because I was taking care of so many other horses. None of the owners were there, so that was really stressful [because of the] six horses I was accountable for during all this smoke and we've never dealt with this before."
Even though the barn did roughly discuss an evacuation plan, Ploshay says it wasn't as thorough as she had hoped. Her bosses set up a barn group chat, with around 40 to 50 people, and discussed how to handle the situation.
Due to the barn's large numbers, many suggested simply writing their numbers on their horses' hooves and letting them run free since not everyone would be able to safely move out their horses in time before an imminent fire threat.
"They would just be running through Cupertino essentially, which I really didn't like because we're right next to so many streets," Ploshay said. "We were just going to have to let them run free, and that was freaking me out too. I [thought], 'I can't do that to these horses.'"
Owner and family member at Garrod Farms Vicky Bosworth says that although her farm is not at high risk for fires since it is surrounded by vineyards and pasture land that can slow the flames, they still sent out strict safety procedures to all staff and held a meeting to cover those procedures. In contrast to Skylar's work, Garrod Farms has a written plan for employees to follow in case of evacuation or shelter-in-place. The plan’s execution depends on whether firefighters can use the narrow roads that lead to the farms or if their employees can move the 65 horses into safe zones near their property.
"We keep an ear to the ground, and we [keep up] with all the websites, but we're not particularly worried," Bosworth said. "We feel that we're in a safe location and that we're not at any risk for the fires. [But] we have identified safe places on the property for us to move horses to take them out of their facilities and put them into safe areas that would not get affected by the fire. And so we have a whole plan of how that would happen."
As habitats and ecosystems continue to burn, wildlife are being pushed out of their habitats and into residential areas.
The Wildlife Center of Silicon Valley, the largest animal rehabilitation center in the area, had to use their evacuation procedures a few weeks ago for four days. According to Executive Director Laura Hawkins, the evacuation was halted after the team knew that the fires did not spread their way.
"The wildfires affect us probably not the way that you [would think]," Hawkins said. "The way [the fire] affects us is that we're at the base of East Foothill … The fire threatened us and we had to evacuate. And luckily, they called it off right as we got all the animals out."
The wildlife center takes in about 5,600 sick, injured and orphaned native wildlife in California every year –– 30 to 60 a day –– according to Hawkins. They follow their procedure of contacting other animal agencies in San Jose and rehabilitation centers, where they can temporarily place some of the animals when considering evacuation.
Apart from evacuation, if a fire approaches their property, Bosworth says the air quality is another concern for their horses. She says that they have dropped the horses’ level of exercise in the past few weeks, as the horses spend all their time outside and there is not much they can do to avoid breathing in smoke.
"If the air quality is poor for people, it's also poor for horses," Bosworth said. "When they're outside, they are breathing the air so there isn't anything we can do about that, but you don't exacerbate it by working them hard. You don't make their lungs work any harder than they have to."
Similarly, Ploshay started to take Jericho on shorter walks than before, constantly ensuring that he was drinking enough water as well. She understood that it was better to remain safe and postpone her riding rather than to push her horse.
"Since [Jericho] is so much older, I was concerned with how he was going to do with the smoke because he hasn't experienced this before," Ploshay said.
She noticed that the smoke was noticeably irritating her horse and the other barn horses’ eyes because of their fly masks. These masks, normally meant to protect from flies and other biting insects, were restricting the airflow inside the masks. The semi-transparent material made smoke in the air harder to escape, condensing the smoke, which further irritated the horses’ eyes.
“I had to pick my poison in a way,” Ploshay said. “Do I want all the flies around his eyes, which causes my horse’s eyes [to act] up, or the smoke, which he's really not used to because it's trapped under the mask?”
However, for some horses, when their mask is taken off, they develop a headshaking syndrome — a condition in which the horse starts excessively moving their head in order to fend off flies that might be bothering them.
Ploshay ultimately decided to take off the eye masks for the horses who weren’t affected by this syndrome and closely monitor the impact on their eyes. She said she made sure to check and constantly rinse their eyes with cold water to compensate for the smoke.
“I know one of them got really stressed,” Ploshay said. “Which was hard for me because she was a new horse I was working with too and she was freaking out because they sense all the weather changes.”
In contrast, Hawkins says that the center has not had many animals directly affected by the fires. However, they are in their usual busy season — March to September — that’s caused by the high numbers of births over the summer, which increases the number of animals that wander onto properties.
"[Now] people are coming that never knew about us before, so we're seeing this spike in when the animals are coming in — it's more people out there finding them," Hawkins said. "About 95% of the animals who come in are because of bad human interactions. So I worry about people who poison, and I worry about people who [place] traps."
Hawkins says the best thing for people to do — with the higher chance of wildlife wandering into residences because of the fires — is to educate themselves on what animals they can handle themselves, and what animals must be handled by professionals. The center provides a link on their website and a phone number open every day of the week.
"There are certain things that we say that people should not handle or any of the rabies vector species," Hawkins said. "For [most animals], our people can pick those up and bring them to us. You can call them to ask any questions because we can help them through it, tell them what to do with the animals ... I do worry about human-animal interactions with wildlife, and also [keeping] them [away] from their cat or dog. I also worry that we keep building on their territory, which forces them closer and closer to us."