Bubbles — the part draft horse — is upset.
He whinnies over and over.
Horses often talk to each other when they’re upset or confused.
At the Spokane Fair and Expo Center, dozens of horses, a donkey and even an emu are taking reprieve from the fires. They’ve been evacuated here by their families, friends and neighbors.
“I definitely knew that Bubbles would get on a trailer no problem,” said Lu Hill, 46, of West Spokane. “He’s a good boy.”
Hill works for a nonprofit in Spokane, the Waters Meet Foundation. Hill boards Bubbles and her other horse at the Love One Another Youth Ranch north of Spokane, near where one of the fires broke out on Saturday. She said she just had to trust that the ranch owners would get her horses trailered out.
In emergencies, people write phone numbers on horses’ coats in case they get lost or separated from their owners. Horses don’t have dog tags.
“He was scared, though,” Hill said. “And anytime there’s phone numbers written on your horse, there is a new sense of fear. It definitely makes you want to lean into let’s be safe rather than sorry. The idea of letting my horse go, and hoping I find them again is the most devastating feeling you can imagine.”
She said she has a close relationship with her horses. Bubbles has been off his feed and water — he’s not used to being stalled. At home, he roams a large paddock.
“You can feel that they are scared too,” Hill said. “ They know something’s coming. They have just as much urgency to be safe.”
The people here are stressed too. Many were helping to clean stalls.
Horse owners are feeding, watering and cleaning stalls, but so are many trained volunteers.
Twelve-year-old Justin sweeps up an empty stall. He has a toothy grin and curly blond mop and sports a blue shirt with a massive baseball emblazoned on it.
His grandmother and grandfather’s home burned in the Old Trails fire. He was at the fairgrounds stable with his mother, who was volunteering to take care of many of the animals. She asked that we not use his last name because the family fears looters might target his grandparents’ destroyed property.
“By the time they got the Level 3 evacuation, ashes were falling on their cars,” Justin said. “Luckily they got both their cars, and everything important and they got out safely.”
His own family also had to evacuate the Fairview fire. He managed to save his baseball, football and basketball cards.
“It was pretty scary,” Justin said. “She [his mother] just said pack everything you could, what was important to you. Stuff that can’t be replaced. So I just grabbed everything that was important. And within 15 minutes a police showed up and said ‘You gotta go.’ So we left.”
Justin is sad, and a bit stressed. Pretty much everyone around him is.
“In the moment it was scary, but we were lucky that everyone got out alive,” he said.
He believes most everyone will recoup their lives — eventually.
Read the audio transcript here.
This story was reported in partnership with the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington, including Spokane Public Radio.
