Big animals pose big problems

RAMONA — The Lawrence family of Leaning Pine Ranch came home from a fire evacuation Friday with their seven horses, six dogs, a cat and a bird -- but no food or water.

After a five-day fight against the Witch fire, this horse-mad town of 36,000 had no clean drinking water Friday. And food supplies had been wiped out by Steve Lawrence, 58, who stayed behind to help feed firefighters -- and to protect his $750,000 muscle car collection.

Many in the community were unable to save their pets themselves. Ramona-based Emergency Animal Rescue, a volunteer group, took in 120 horses, cats, dogs, geese and a pregnant goat who lost her kid during the uproar, executive director Doug Lake said.

The Lawrences got their animals through it, but only after a daisy-chain rescue effort that drew on friends, neighbors and even strangers to take the pets to and from evacuation areas.

About 7:30 p.m. Sunday, the Lawrences got a call from a neighbor who said he had to evacuate but didn’t have enough trailer space to accommodate his horses.

Steve Lawrence’s wife, Barbara, 55, and daughter Katie, 22, borrowed a friend’s trailer and ferried the extra horses to an equestrian center. As they were driving back from that rescue, they got a call that all of Ramona, a San Diego County town that lies between Escondido and Poway, was under a mandatory evacuation order.

“By this time the town is in gridlock, it’s bumper to bumper, everyone has their trailers full of horses,” Barbara said.

Back home, Barbara and Katie loaded three of their horses into trailers.

That left four horses. Friends split the horses up, taking two to fellow horse owner Nancy Johnson’s ranch and two to another friend’s place.

Before leaving, Katie wrote her cellphone number on hot-pink duct tape and stuck it to the horses’ manes. She also scrawled the number on some of the horses’ hooves with a Sharpee pen.

Meanwhile, another of Lawrence’s daughters, Jamie Leclair, 31, and her husband were driving to Santee with the family’s smaller pets: two 65-pound tortoises, a chinchilla, four bearded dragons, a bird, a 5-foot iguana, 13 large dogs and two cats that hate each other.

At 11:30 p.m. Sunday, Katie and Barbara arrived at the Del Mar Fairgrounds with their three horses and grabbed a nap in the back seat of their Chevy Silverado. About 4 a.m. they received a call from distraught friends who had to flee and could no longer care for two of their horses.

The friends opened a bale of hay, watered the ground and turned the horses loose. Barbara Lawrence called a veterinarian friend, who rescued the two abandoned horses.

Monday night the Del Mar Fairgrounds were ordered evacuated as the fires approached. The Lawrences and their three horses decamped to Fiesta Island, a part of Mission Bay Park that had turned into an impromptu animal evacuation center with about 100 horses. They camped on the beach there for four days.

On Thursday, however, officials abruptly ordered the horses out by noon Friday.

“It’s really so amazing how much the city came together, then they were like, ‘Oh, we’re done,’ ” Katie said.

Thursday at midnight Katie and Barbara arrived home with two of their horses and early Friday they collected the others, still in fly masks to shield their eyes from ash.

Maxim, a high-energy thoroughbred, and Autumn were happy to be home, Katie said. “When we put them loose in pasture, the second we turned them loose, they went running around the pasture bucking, kicking, rolling.”

tami.abdollah@latimes.com