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When Scott Lotter made his way back after fleeing the fast-moving Camp Fire, his hilltop home was gone but his family’s beloved koi were still swimming in their pond. He scooped up Charlize, George and Goldie, along with 50 other gold fish in huge nets, and turned to the Veterinary Emergency Response Team at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine for help, as so many others in the Camp Fire had.
“It’s a little miracle,” said Lotter, his voice thick with emotion. “You need something to hold onto at a time like this. At least we could save the fish. They are like our babies.”
While firefighters continue to battle the blaze and emergency workers struggle to help hundreds of displaced residents in Paradise, animal rescue workers are fighting their own heartbreaking battle, rescuing and treating hundreds of injured pets and wild animals in the wake of the devastation.
It’s been a marathon for Dr. John Madigan and the VERT animal rescue team. Five days of trying to save the menagerie of pigs, goats, dogs, horses and fish that are being evacuated to the Butte County Fairgrounds in Gridley, where a choking gray smoke hangs in the air and the fire-singed animals never stop coming.
“It’s all creatures great and small in here. The need is urgent and we were among the first on the scene so we’ve been at it for days,” said Madigan, decked out in suspenders. “It’s like a huge ER where you don’t know what will get wheeled in next. I’ve seen this kind of devastation before, but you never get used to it. You just do the best you can.”
The pace is relentless and the conditions poor.
“You do triage all day long,” said Madigan. “In the office, you have lights and equipment. Out here, when it gets dark, it’s just dark. And then animals start fighting each other and then you worry about diseases spreading. The good part is you’re tired but you don’t feel tired. You don’t feel tired until afterwards.”
It’s work that is not for the faint of heart. Cassie Porter, a volunteer with the animal rescue group Cowboy 911, has sifted through countless burned carcasses in her quest to save one cat, two miniature donkeys and six goats from the rubble in Paradise. Bedeviled by a five-pound chihuahua who ran off when she tried to grab him, she left him a bowl of water and some food on the scorched earth that may once have been his home.
“It’s pretty gnarly,” she says. “There’s only so much you can do.”
But for rescuers, there is nothing as gratifying as saving a life, no matter how small that life may be. Madigan was thrilled to be able to help Lotter save most of his fish.
“The people here are just devastated. If you can help their animal, it’s like they won the lottery,” he said. “When you have got nothing else, it’s a little bright spot to hold onto in the darkness.”
Wrenching images of charred animals, lost pets and stranded horses have been widely shared on social media, along with stories of reunions between people and their animals. Like Lotter, Richard and Sharron Metcalf, who moved to Paradise from Utah just five months ago, also got lucky. They evacuated Thursday morning, fleeing through flames and opening the gates so their Arabian horses could run free. They were tormented by fear over the fate of their horses. Until a rescue worker spotted all eight, including three pregnant mares and two babies, huddled on the front lawn of their property.
They had come home when the flames died down.
“It’s such a relief. We are so thankful. Not knowing if they made it was the worst,” said Metcalf, crying through his words. “No one makes it through a fire like this. The house is gone. The barn is gone, but somehow the horses made it.”
Miles away, in Corning, Terry Skevington is keeping one eye on the horses and the other eye on the window at the evacuation center at the Equestrian Center at Rolling Hills, which has taken in 70 horses during this inferno.
“I can see the flames from here,” said Skevington, a longtime horse trainer who runs the center. “But you can tell by the winds it’s not coming this way. Of course, it took out a whole town so it’s hard to predict.”
Skevington’s steel nerves have been hard-won. A veteran of California wildfires, he remembers having to choose which horses to save on his own ranch, which was threatened during the Cascade Fire last year.
“That’s like saying ‘Which kid are you going to save?’ All you can do is pick the ones who have the best chance of survival and turn them loose.”
Expertise that only comes with that kind of experience is priceless. It’s one of the key reasons Madigan wants his veterinary students to man the triage centers near Paradise. As climate change grows more extreme, he thinks veterinarian disaster response training will be more relevant.
“As more natural disasters occur, including fires, floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes,” says Madigan, “they will need training in mass casualty situations.”
Learn more about organizations accepting help and donations for pets and wildlife affected by the Camp Fire here.
Julia Prodis Sulek contributed to this report.
