Do you live in an area at risk for wildfires? If so, it’s time to take steps to help minimize wildfire’s impact on your horses. Take heed even if your area hasn’t seen a wildfire for 15 years or longer; the El Nino weather patterns could increase the chance of dry conditions and, thus, fires in areas that haven’t been impacted in many years.

It’s not necessarily a wildfire’s flames that will initially force your and your horses’ evacuation. Rather, it’s the thick black smoke filled with toxins, along with poor air quality, that will begin having an impact well before the flames arrive. Horses have large lungs and no way to filter out smoke and fire’s toxic byproducts—including acrid smoke and tiny particles—and can develop serious health issues even when smoke is several miles away.

To help you prepare in advance, we’ll review some simple steps you can take to make farms as safe and evacuations as seamless as possible.

Design or retrofit your barn with wildfire and fire safety in mind. Open ventilation, frost-free hydrants, dry hydrant connections to existing water sources, and 33 yards minimum of defensible space around each structure allows fire crews to rally around your facility to protect it from falling cinders and direct flames. During fires, consider generators or solar power sources to run pumps and appliances after power goes out. Ensure you have stored extra water for animals in case power is lost and hydrants aren’t functional.

Steel and tile roofs are better able to resist flame spread from cinders compared to composite roofs which are more vulnerable.

Cinders often instigate a fire from the ground floor, which is generally where flammable materials including hay, straw, and bedding are stored or located. Further, many barns cannot be fully enclosed with a flame-retardant material, which could prevent cinders blowing into the recesses of stalls and storage areas.

Use xeric landscaping to reduce flammable vegetation around structures. If the flames are so close that they threaten barns, wind-blown cinders could cause facilities to catch fire before the flame front actually gets to the property. Cinders can be blown in from hundreds of yards or even miles away. Consider FireWise plants for landscaping; your local extension service can provide a list of these species. There are no completely fireproof plants but some catch and spread fire more slowly and, therefore, are safer for fire-prone areas. Avoid landscaping with mulches made of combustibles and placing plants too close to buildings, as well.

Make evacuation plans. Evacuation planning should be a part of the owner’s annual review of a facility’s disaster mitigation strategies. Owners leading horses down streets or interstate evacuation routes is a poor method for removing horses from harm’s way. While it demonstrates the lengths to which people will go to attempt to save their animals, it is dangerous and a consequence of failing to plan ahead. Rather, keep trucks fueled and trailers hitched with everything loaded and ready to go should evacuation warnings or notices come in.

Be sure to pack water and forage for any equids being evacuated and ensure each animal has proper identification, especially if being housed at a public shelter or private facility.

Very few items of horse clothing are fire retardant, but there are still some materials to stay away from during a fire. Avoid synthetic (e.g., nylon or plastic) halters, lead ropes, and tack, along with nylon fly sheets and masks, that could melt and cause serious burns to the horse or the handler.

Teaching horses to be reliable loaders in trailers, vans, or transportation equipment is essential to facilitating evacuations.

Don’t just lead your horse out of a barn and say, “Now what am I going to do?” Have evacuation sites in mind ahead of time, ranging from facilities close by to ones much farther away, if need be.

Practice your evacuation plan to find its weaknesses, and coordinate with local fire officials to get their input. They are the professionals that can point out individual problems to consider with fire prevention. Your local fire department and even insurers can walk through facilities and barns with owners to identify hazards and give suggestions for reducing fire risk. Large public riding and show facilities are normally inspected at least annually, but regular inspections are a good idea regardless of an operation’s size or local law enforcement requirements.

Create and post a barn fire evacuation plan and practice it routinely—at least once per quarter. Public facilities and boarding barns should host fire drills and review the evacuation plans monthly to ensure new and long-time boarders, employees, and students alike are well prepared.

Additionally, facilities should post wildfire evacuation plans where everyone can see it easily. The planning process is as important as (if not more important than) the plan itself. The plan should involve all potentially affected people—family, employees, friends, boarders, etc.—to ensure everyone’s commitment to the effort. This kind of training and preparation makes employees and family members more self-reliant, efficient and confident if a disaster or emergency occurs.

Since it is impossible to render any facility fire-proof, management must enforce fire prevention techniques and and train employees in mitigation techniques. Wildfires require a large number of local (even regional, state, and national) firefighters to deploy, which means they might not be available to assist you until late in the disaster’s course. Untrained people without respiratory protection and proper fire protective clothing and training should never enter burning or smoking barn structures or zones. All personnel commonly around barns should be familiar with the evacuation plan and the location of barn fire response equipment such as emergency phones, hoses, water sources and fire extinguishers.

Facilities should have a shelter-in-place plan for animals and humans if evacuation is not an option or there isn’t time to safely do so. Horses should not be left in barns during wildfires. Rather, turn them out in pastures or paddocks with all combustible vegetation removed (such as drylots), plowed under, or previously burned off. Shelter-in-place is considered very dangerous and should only be used where there is not time to evacuate the animals to a safer place.

A fire requires three things to burn: an ignition source (spark or intense heat), a fuel source (combustible material), and oxygen. Because oxygen is readily available in the atmosphere and based on the arrangement of the combustibles and fuel type, fires can smolder sometimes for hours. Cinders must be extinguished during smoldering, before flames develop. After flames erupt and engulf buildings, very few structures are salvageable. When cinders drop on combustible items in a wildfire, they very quickly cause spot fires.

Toxins released during fires can severely damage any living organism’s lungs. Carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide are common byproducts of fires and, when inhaled, block oxygen absorption at the hemoglobin level in the blood, causing asphyxiation through anoxia. Animals removed from wildfire areas can appear medically stable for days, but eventually crash due to severe pneumonia. Owners should consult a veterinarian immediately to assist with aftercare.

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 150 “Standard on Fire and Life Safety in Animal Housing Facilities” includes safety requirements for both humans and animals in all types of animal housing facilities. Facilities should be designed and constructed to limit fire spread, maintain building structural integrity as long as possible, and keep fire escape routes accessible for a specific period of time. While it is impossible to make a livestock building “fireproof,” owners should constantly manage fire risk by incorporating safety practices and prevention strategies into their management focus. Barn design should attempt to increase the amount of time (minutes) that it takes a fire to reach the flash point (the lowest temperature at which vapors of the material will ignite when given an ignition source) by modifying building materials, contents, and compartmentalization with fire resistant barriers. These best practices are available free at NFPA.org.

Fire prevention, protection, and suppression considerations might not be foremost in the agricultural building designer’s mind, but owners should insist upon including detection and suppression techniques in buildings to allow fires to be slowed or extinguished. Fire prevention involves minimizing the fuel sources by storing hay and bedding in a separate building, keeping the barn clean (including cob web removal), and enforcing a strict no smoking policy. Fire detection should set off automatic fire-suppression systems (such as extinguishers and sprinkler systems).

Sprinkler systems and fire suppression methods have been proven to extinguish or slow fires in barns affected by wildfire, yet are a rare addition to barns. In some climates a “dry” versus a “wet” or precharged system must be used to prevent the water freezing in the pipes. Automated wet or dry sprinkler systems (depending upon the water pressure and geography at a particular facility) should be properly installed and maintained. The initial cost can be high, however, many insurance companies will cut premiums by as much as 50% should owners take on this depreciable expense. These systems might require a generator to run the pumps once power in lost especially in rural areas. There are numerous other suppliers of fire retardants that can be sprayed on existing buildings to limit flame spread on existing wood surfaces.

Wildfires are terrifying natural phenomena, but horse owners can take steps to protect their horses, facilities, and themselves in advance.