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British woman saves horses from LA wildfires

Graham Barnard & Alice Cunningham
BBC News, Suffolk
Contributed Thea Creasy rides a black horse through a field. She wears a black riding helmet, T-shirt and neckerchief. The horse walks on a path. The fields surrounding them have some greenery but are largely brown from the sun.Contributed
Thea Creasy helped to organise the rescue and evacuation of hundreds of horses in LA during the wildfires

A British horse trainer living in the United States has told of the efforts undertaken to rescue hundreds of horses from wildfires engulfing Los Angeles.

Thea Creasy, originally from Southwold, in Suffolk, has worked with horses for the past 30 years.

She moved to LA two decades ago and found herself caught up in the recent wildfires that have so far left 27 people dead and have destroyed more than 10,000 homes and properties.

Ms Creasy feared many of the rescued horses were now left without homes and faced long waits in evacuation centres.

Last Wednesday, Ms Creasy worked to rescue a friend's horses near the Palisades area that had been blocked off for safety reasons.

While they had requested for permission from officials, they were denied access which Ms Creasy said was "very distressing".

They took matters into their own hands finding other routes around the area and, despite being first mistaken for looters, they got to the horses and got them out as they watched smoke rise above a nearby hillside, Ms Creasy said.

They reached an evacuation centre in the Valley area, but it did not have space for the horses, as first reported by The Telegraph.

As they discussed where to go next, Ms Creasy said her "phone started going crazy".

"I got all these texts and calls and another fire had started, this was the Kenneth fire which was affecting Calabasas," she said.

"This was directly next to a street that I work on as a horse trainer that had several of my clients on."

Contributed Thick smoke billows above a large hillside against a blue sky. Trees line the hillside. A horse trailer can be seen to the left of the image.Contributed
Ms Creasy could see smoke rising from a nearby hillside when helping to rescue her friend's horses

Ms Creasy believed there were about 100 horses that needed to be rescued here and she used social media to request help from others with trailers.

"The horse community in California is unbelievable, people just show up, everyone steps up," she continued.

"It's not just me doing this, I didn't single handedly do this. It's an incredible community of people."

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Contributed Ms Creasy takes a selfie while standing next to a horse. Ms Creasy has long dark hair and has a nose ring. The horse is a bay colour with a white section stretches from its forehead to its nose.Contributed
Ms Creasy said hundreds of horses had been displaced due to the fires

"As we got on to the freeway we could just see this massive cloud of black smoke and that's when I really started to panic," she continued.

"We had to get there as quickly as we could, sometimes these fires move so incredibly fast with these wind speeds.

"You really don't have that much time."

Ms Creasy said when they got to the street she found horse owners who "looked completely panicked" and were unsure if their horses had been saved.

However, they had no issues with any of the horses and none "caused a fuss" meaning they were able to evacuate them all.

Ms Creasy said there were now hundreds of horses and thousands of other animals without homes.

She added she would be volunteering at some of the centres to help support these animals.

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