Animals displaced by fires land at Clark County fairgrounds

Kody Bishoprick first heard the news when the phone rang at 5 a.m. Tuesday. The Eagle Creek Fire had jumped the Columbia River and was within miles of Windy Ridge Farm, where he works as a ranch foreman helping care for 22 horses near the border with Skamania County.

As the air grew smokier and flakes of ash as large as paper plates fell from the sky that day, he knew they needed to evacuate the horses that the farm boards for local residents before the fire closed in.

“We didn’t want to wait until the authorities knocked on our door,” he said.

So he called up the owners of the horses, who then came with their trucks and trailers and took the animals to the Clark County Event Center at the Fairgrounds, where they’re waiting out the fire along with a dozen alpacas.

In addition to threatening homes and displacing residents, the fire has also created another set of concerns for animal owners who’ve been aided by volunteers and local organizations.

Ed Linnett, fairgrounds facilities manager, said that the center posted on Facebook that it had space available for horse owners imperiled by the fire. So far, he said, there hasn’t been a large influx of animals to the fairgrounds, but he said that could change.

“Who knows what will come?” he said. “As the wind changes, the fire could grow.”

Linnett said that plenty of hay and water have been donated for the animals and that people have even volunteered to clean out the barns.

“We have a big horse community, and everyone is like a big family,” said Jake Anderson, who came out to the fairgrounds to offer a hand.

The fairgrounds asks that anyone keeping animals there camp out over night to make sure they’re cared for. Grace Holcroft, a staff member at Windy Ridge Farm, packed up from her house outside of Washougal and has been staying in an RV at the fairgrounds.

She said that when the farm loaded up the horses on Tuesday, ash was snowing down, covering her arms and nearby cars. She said some horses were spooked and resisted being loaded into their trailers. One almost fell down, she said. But overall, Holcroft said, the departure was much more orderly than it likely would have been had they waited until the fire was so close that they were forced to evacuate.

“It was all so calm,” said Joee Andersen, a Vancouver resident who boards her horse at the farm of the evacuation.

John Morrison, fair manager and CEO of the event center, said that the facility has 185 stalls and will be taking livestock until they’re at capacity.

Online, nearby residents have used a Facebook page called PNW Natural Disaster/Fire Evacuation Resource Group to offer shelter for animals displaced by the fire.

Sumaya Mitchell, manager at VCA East Mill Plain Animal Hospital, said the hospital’s locations in Battle Ground and Vancouver have accepted a couple of dogs and about eight cats free of charge.

“As long as we can physically support them, we are happy to take them,” she said. She added that the hospital has also received more people offering to volunteer than they’ve needed.

Lisa Feder, vice president and director of shelter operations for the Humane Society for Southwest Washington, said that her organization has cleared out some space for a possible influx of animals. But so far, she said, most of the Humane Society’s efforts have been focused on helping nearby animal welfare organizations serve communities that have been more directly impacted by the blaze.

“The one funny thing that happened is, we had a family that was evacuating, and while they were evacuating their animals they found a stray cat,” she said.

She said the family dropped the cat off at the Humane Society’s shelter. So far, she said, it’s the only animal displaced by the fire they’ve taken in.