So, who would I contact to get a quote for a barn sprinkler system?
If you think the firefighters will save your horses, think again! Prevention is the key!
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10204435457840980&set=vb.1667420298&type=2&theater
If you think the firefighters will save your horses, think again! Prevention is the key!
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10204435457840980&set=vb.1667420298&type=2&theater
That video is disturbing. 
[QUOTE=LookmaNohands;7942170]
If you think the firefighters will save your horses, think again! Prevention is the key!
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10204435457840980&set=vb.1667420298&type=2&theater[/QUOTE]
Are they supposed to be showing how firefighters have no idea how to work a halter and leadrope?
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My husband did all of the inside wiring. It is all in approved conduit - even the insurance inspector was impressed.
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I have to use extension cords for fans and heated buckets but, they are the heaviest gauge construction extension cords I can find and things get unplugged for the day, when I turn the horses out.
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I have gone over the proposed fire escape plan with Mr. WTW a dozen times because his non-horse self thinks he knows everything:no:
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As mentioned by another poster, I also keep a baby monitor on my nightstand. I keep hoping I will one day have the money for a night vision camera system but, a baby monitor works just fine to hear the horses if they get amped up about something as serious as fire.
I suppose the old fashioned âopen the stalls and chase the horses outâ routine isnât up to code any more. You would have to have some experience with horses to do much more than that.
Regarding a baby monitor â I donât think people understand that you will not have time, once you hear a ruckus in the barn, to get up, get shoes on and get to the barn PLUS get the horses OUT, particularly if you have to halter each one and lead it out ⊠to where??? Even the âthrow open the doors and chase the horses outâ technique may fail, unless you have a run-out chute to another fenced and secured area to keep the horses from charging back into the barn.
The Facebook video posted above may not be the best, but it does illustrate what the firefighters will be wearing and what the air masks sound like ⊠in a charged and emergency atmosphere, will YOUR HORSES be calm when faced with a masked, totally-suited up firefighter who may not be familiar with handling horses???
This is why prevention is key. Outside doors to all stalls that lead to a run-out area that will in turn lead to a secure fenced paddock or pasture away from the barn. Sprinkler systems. Proper smoke/fire detectors (not the ones you buy for $5 each at Wal-Mart). No extension cords or heat sources. A personal visit from your fire department.
Kingâs Ransom, I think if I were you, I would not leave the horses in the barn overnight until you can do the outside doors and the run-out and the attached paddock.
SCM1959
Regarding a baby monitor â I donât think people understand that you will not have time, once you hear a ruckus in the barn, to get up, get shoes on and get to the barn PLUS get the horses OUT, particularly if you have to halter each one and lead it out ⊠to where??? Even the âthrow open the doors and chase the horses outâ technique may fail, unless you have a run-out chute to another fenced and secured area to keep the horses from charging back into the barn.
The Facebook video posted above may not be the best, but it does illustrate what the firefighters will be wearing and what the air masks sound like ⊠in a charged and emergency atmosphere, will YOUR HORSES be calm when faced with a masked, totally-suited up firefighter who may not be familiar with handling horses???
This is why prevention is key. Outside doors to all stalls that lead to a run-out area that will in turn lead to a secure fenced paddock or pasture away from the barn. Sprinkler systems. Proper smoke/fire detectors (not the ones you buy for $5 each at Wal-Mart). No extension cords or heat sources. A personal visit from your fire department.
Kingâs Ransom, I think if I were you, I would not leave the horses in the barn overnight until you can do the outside doors and the run-out and the attached paddock.
SCM1959
I am paranoid about fire as well. I completely shut off the power to my barn every night before I go to bed (breaker box in house) and turn it on in the morning. Even so, I am neurotic about still unplugging everything when not in use (radios, fans, buckets, etc), keeping all flammables out of the barn, hay storage in separate building and have a fire extinguisher at the entrance of the barn door PLUS a hose hooked up (drained in winter) OUTSIDE the barn. I also make sure my driveway and road to the barn is never blocked in case a fire truck or EMS vehicle has to get down there. Donât know much else that I can do except pray. :sadsmile:
I had put that video on my facebook page a few weeks ago. I commented that it would be better to always use regular halters rather than rope ones. Here is what a friend who is a horse person and firefighter wrote in response. It paints a bleak picture of ever getting horses out:
good point re the halters, although in smoke conditions and with a person who has probably never haltered a horse, itâs going to be tough no matter what is hanging there. While most barn fires are caused by faulty wiring (often damaged by mice), what burns will be what is called Class A materials (wood of the building, straw or shavings in bedding and the hay). Your water hose will deliver more quantity of water to extinguish a blaze than hand-held extinguishers. Plus the fact it is pressurized will help it penetrate the packed materials contained in the bales of hay. Those hanging extinguishers which you suggest contain powdered materials which will put out all types of fire (they are marked for Class A B and C fires), but they donât contain enough quantity to be of much use for you to put out a fast-spreading fire which would occur one the hay is involved. Moreover, they require some technique and the need to get rather close to a fire. There is an extinguisher which contains pressurized water with about a 10-foot reach, but they can freeze during the winter, so are not really appropriate for having at your barn. And, again, they run out of juice. A barn fire is a really bad situation; hidden fire in stacked hay bales, lots of oxygen available to feed a quickly-growing fire, very large animals whose instincts donât help their cause ⊠the very best plan for a barn fire is prevention. Check your barn wiring, if needed rewire your barn and encase the wiring to protect it from mice, make sure you havenât overloaded circuits with bucket heaters, etc., replace an aged fuse box with a new box with breakers that trip when there is a problem, make sure your hay is cured before you stack it, be careful with appliances like coffee makers, fridges, etc. For the firefighting side, the video really misses the point of how firefighting operations will go at a barn. With usually volunteer departments responding, often from some distance, 1. there will be a time delay. The first unit may get there pretty quickly, but the other needed units may have quite a delay in arriving. Firefighting is based on time. Fires grow exponentially, not in a linear fashion. Thus doubling a given duration results in four times as much fire. There wonât be personnel available to screw around with a halter with the fire growing, usually overhead in the loft. 2. There will be a water supply problem for firefighting operations. Farms are usually in rural, non-hydranted areas. The pumper will arrive with, letâs be generous, 1,000 gallons of water on board. With a small handline efficiently used, thatâs four minutes of water. If they use the big deck gun on the roof to give a big hit to knock out as much fire as possible, that can be one minute to 1.5 minutes. Okay, they laid out a big supply line down your driveway to be supplied by a tanker; that will be 4 or five more minutes. If they set up a shuttle operation to being in large quantities of water, that can take 15 to 20 minutes to just set up, much less begin bringing in water. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking and the fire has free access to oxygen. Meanwhile, noisy, siren-spewing beasts with flashing lights have just pulled up. Folks with face masks and breathing apparatus making weird noise are scurrying around. Will any horse in any kind of halter be very leadable at this moment? And a âpractice drillâ with your local fire company will not result in a calm horse during a fire. They know theyâre in big trouble if theyâre locked in a stall. ( I once had to deal with a horse in a pasture while a helicopter landed for an emergency transport in the adjacent pasture. Not fun.) This is why most barn fires result in lost barns. This is why you never, never, never want to have a barn fire. Unless you are there during the first one to three minutes of the fire with a charged garden hose and a knife to open burning hay bales, a burning barn is a lost barn. But thanks for the posting to remind people of the dangers. Iâm a horseman and was a professional firefighter for almost 25 years.
[QUOTE=LookmaNohands;7943055]
Unless you are there during the first one to three minutes of the fire with a charged garden hose and a knife to open burning hay bales, a burning barn is a lost barn. [/I][/QUOTE]
Exactly!
This is why prevention is key.
I agree that prevention is key, but the situation is not quite as bleak as painted here. Earlier this week a fire consumed a barn on a ranch here near Wichita. The barn destroyed, but the barn manager did get all of the horses safely out. No lives lost of animals or people. I donât know all of the particulars, but I suspect the man had more than one minute to get all the horses out of there. Yes, itâs dire, but I donât think so impossible that itâs useless to try.
[QUOTE=cowboymom;7942502]
I suppose the old fashioned âopen the stalls and chase the horses outâ routine isnât up to code any more. You would have to have some experience with horses to do much more than that.[/QUOTE]
There are multiple, documented instances where horses were successfully chased out of a burning barn, promptly returning to it, being burned to death for their effort.
To the horse the barn means safety and comfort. It appears that this notion overrides any fear of fire.
Some years back we visited a co-op barn in an adjacent county. Every stall was padlocked. We could detect no central âkey box.â In the event of a fire every horse there would be roasted. Literally.
So have a fire detection system that alerts the house AND the fire department. Have a halter on the front of each stall and a place to take and restrain horses you remove in an emergency. Remember that will likely want to go back.
Have insurance on your tack so donât get hurt trying to rescue a saddle.
Fires in barns are rare. They may be tragic but they are mercifully uncommon tragedies.
G.
P.S. On the subject of sprinkler systems, remember that the sprinkler heads cannot spray anymore water than is in the pipe. It canât deliver any more pressure than is in the pipe. If you want this kind of system you will likely need a standpipe that will serve as both reservoir and head pressure source. If all you have to your barn is a 1" residential quality line that will likely be inadequate for any real protection. If itâs fed by a well it better be a pretty strong well.
Here is a link to the story about the Wichita barn fire. More than a dozen horses were rescued: http://www.kansas.com/news/local/article5435805.html
We always used plenty of great quality blankets, double if necessary! Never had an illness or problem in all those years. And that was in the cold Northeast. :winkgrin:
[QUOTE=Guilherme;7943736]
Fires in barns are rare. They may be tragic but they are mercifully uncommon tragedies. G.[/QUOTE]
For the love of everything holy, please stop saying this.
Respectfully, we may just have different definitions of ârareâ and âuncommonâ.
This is a list of 23 barn fires that have occurred in the last 45 days.
Jan 5 - MI - 100s of pigs died
Jan 4 - KS - 20 H survived
Jan 3 - MN - 0 animals died - hay, tack, equipment lost
Jan 2 - CA - 3 H died
Jan 1 - CO - 2 H died
Dec 29 - MN - 9 H died, 4 H survived, 2 people hospitalized
Dec 26 - NY - 60+ cows died
Dec 23 - DE - 11 H died
Dec 22 - TX - 7 H died
Dec 17 - MN - 100s of hogs died
Dec 16 - Ont, Canada - 13,000 chickens died, 2 survived
Dec 16 - CA - fairgrounds barn fire, no animals harmed
Dec 14 - NJ - barn fire, 0 animals died
Dec 12 - GA - barn fire, 0 animals died
Dec 12 - NY - some cows & calves died (no #s provided by owners)
Dec 11 - MD - 4 hogs died
Dec 10 - Vancouver, Canada - 6 H, 3 sheep, family of pygmy goats died; 2 llamas & several ducks survived
Dec 6 - CA - hay barn fire, 0 animals died
Dec 1 - UT - several chickens & 1 dog died
Nov 27 - New Brunswick, Canada - 11 H (incl. 4 pregnant mares) & 1 dog died, barn cat survived
Nov 27 - GA - 15 H, 2 mini donkeys & 1 dog died, 20 H survived
Nov 25 - WI - barn fire, 0 animals died
Nov 22 - IL - 32 H died, 5 H survived
Nothing about the frequency of fires indicated above (and I may not have captured them all) says rare or uncommon at all.
It is evident that this is a serious problem that needs to be addressed by not only horse owners, but barn owners, insurance companies, barn manufacturers and fire departments cooperatively no matter where you live.
A few additional thoughts:
It takes approximately 4 minutes, 30 seconds for a wooden barn to become fully engulfed in flames, from the moment of ignition. This was determined by the counter on the video of a controlled burn done on an empty barn, so no shavings or hay were present. Imagine how adding shavings or hay to that barn could have hastened the burn time.
What is your local fire departmentâs response time?
And how long might a fire be growing before it triggers an alarm or is noticed?
In addition to Michelleâs video (link shared above), this is what the inside of a smoke-filled barn looks like:
Without the thermal imaging camera, can you see the seven other people in the barn? The video and photo are from a TLAER training; in actuality, most firefighters will not enter a structure if the smoke is lower than their shoulders.
Please keep in mind: most firefighters are like your co-workers who want to swing by on the weekend to let their kids take a pony ride on your OTTB.
They donât know the first dang thing about horses.
I have the greatest respect in the world for firefighters, and work closely with them, but honestly - they have to undergo so much training, that to them, especially in urban/suburban areas, it just doesnât occur to them that they need to know anything about handling livestock - until something like this happens 
(in Lenexa, KS 12-4-14): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX9LfmREgus
So when you invite the fire department out to come and inspect your barn and make recommendations, plan on taking the time to let them handle your horse(s).
- Let them touch, halter, and lead Fluffy to get an idea of what they will be dealing with. (And if you have a problem handling a difficult horse, a firefighter will not put himself or fellow firefighter at risk by doing so.)
- Be sure to explain how to handle the lead rope (i.e., always in an S, donât wrap it around your hand).
- Remind them that ultimately that they will not be able to outmuscle a horse - let go of the lead rope rather than be dragged.
- Remind them not to tie a horse to an engine or the battalion chiefâs side mirror :no: â turning out in a paddock (after doing a 360 check to make sure a gate isnât open at the other end) is ideal; tying to a fence post (not board) is second.
Be sure that your gate and driveway is wide and tall enough to allow apparatus to enter your property, and that they have room to turn around. Trim low hanging branches (you know, the ones that scrape the top of your trailer or truck when you pull out).
This happens to be an Australian fire engine, but you get the idea. Ask your fire department what the measurements are for their largest piece of equipment, and make sure it can fit through your gates.
Chances are if you do (God forbid) have a fire, there will be multiple pieces of equipment responding. For example, the Valley View Acres fire in IL had 47 pieces of equipment (engines, tankers, ambulances, tower ladders, SUVs (chiefs), specialized units, etc.) from 22 departments and an estimated 90+ personnel respond. Will they all be able to access your property or stage on the road leading to your property?
Did you know that your insurance company might offer some sort of discount for having a schematic of your property on file with your local fire department, showing structures, access points to your property, water, paddocks that horses can be turned out into, etc.?
[QUOTE=owlbynite;7943799]
We always used plenty of great quality blankets, double if necessary! Never had an illness or problem in all those years. And that was in the cold Northeast. :winkgrin:[/QUOTE]
??
My dad was a forest fire fighter his entire career; he many times saw wild animals turn and run right into fire and away from people when they saw them.
I guess I donât know many horses that run into a barn for security and safety but thatâs entirely b/c nobody I know keeps a horse exclusively in a stall with no turnout. I guess I ever did manage to chase one out of a burning barn I would try to shut the door behind it.
One thing I havenât seen mentioned yet. Do not park tractors or other machinery in the barn. Aside from being in the way (of escape) the machinery itself can cause a fire.
