Cowboy volunteers ride to the rescue of horses and other animals from fire area

PARADISE — Jerry Kirk stood in the parking lot of a burned-down Safeway shopping center with a group of other cowboys, plotting a rescue route on their cell phones. Towing four horse trailers, the group headed to a home in Paradise, where a woman reported that she had to flee without her eight horses. Kirk made it just a few miles before a woman from another rescue group flagged down the caravan. She had found a German Shepherd, its feet badly burned, near downed power lines off Clark Road. She wanted to know if they had space for the pup. Working with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, Kirk was allowed past the barricades in Paradise Saturday. He had received more than 500 calls from Butte County residents asking for help rescuing cats, dogs, llamas, goats and horses. He wouldn’t be able to get to many of them.n Kirk’s group headed to the address where the owner was forced to leave her horses. They didn’t know what to expect when the pulled past the charred remains of home after home as they approached the property they were looking for. The woman’s house was reduced to rubble. But on what used to be the front lawn were the eight horses, huddled together. Two had burns and needed veterinary care. The group carefully loaded the scared and somewhat cantankerous animals and headed down a rural and smoky Clark Road toward Oroville to return the missing herd. They passed blacked crashed cars left abandoned on the roadside as darkness set in...MORE