(BLACK FOREST, Colo.) — Ashley Eberhardt and her family were one of many who had to evacuate during the Black Forest fire. Once they heard the pre-evacuation orders, there was no second-guessing. Eberhardt would say goodbye to her childhood home and to her favorite part of the property, the barn.

“I probably spend as much time in the barn as I ever did in the house,” Eberhardt said. “You know, that’s where you come when you’re sad, you go to the barn. When you’re happy, you go to the barn like, I don’t know, like a horse is a solution for everything.”

Mango—her solution for everything — is her horse and her partner in crime.

“It’s like almost having a sibling or like a partner,” Eberhardt said. “You know, they protect you. Sometimes they argue with you, but you love them like a sibling.”

Mango inside of the barn.

Mango had been with Ashely for eight months in June of 2013 when she was asked to load up in the horse trailer in the middle of the night.

“There’s no time to panic, it’s just, ‘okay, what do we need to do? What do we need to pack?'” Eberhardt said. “And basically the choice at 3 a.m. was, we can’t do this quickly. You can’t pack up horses quickly. You’ve got to get shavings, you’ve got to get hay and supplements and feed and all that. So, we knew like if they go under pre-evacuation, we’re going, we have to go get her.”

Outside the Eberhardt home in the Black Forest, the barn is at the end of the driveway.

While the fire blazed its own trail, the path of the Eberhardt family would lead them to Random Ranch Animal Sanctuary, into the hands of Amy Bennett.

“It was such a sense of relief, like watching the fire line move and getting those notifications of like, closer and closer and closer to us, getting under mandatory,” Eberhardt recalled. “Just to have her in our back pocket and knowing that like, we could just jump in the trailer at any time and just go to her house and she welcomed us.”

Mango was let outside to munch on some grass.

Bennett lives 20 miles north of Black Forest and she remembers hearing the news of the fire spreading.

“The hard part about that is because we knew there are so many people,” Bennett said. “We knew that people needed help evacuating and places to go because there’s so many horse people, livestock people, etc. in that area.”

The Random Ranch is home to domestic and livestock animals, currently, there are 58 animals at the ranch.

According to the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region (HSPPR) over 600 animals were rescued from evacuation zones and nearly 1,200 animals were sheltered by HSPPR.

“If they didn’t have a trailer, they just spray painted their phone number on their flanks and let them go,” Eberhardt said. “And you know that they have a better chance running than being locked in a stall, which is heartbreaking to think about.”

Mango at The Random Ranch during the Black Forest fire. Courtesy: Ashley Eberhardt.

Eberhardt could not imagine what would have happened if it were not for the assistance and kindness from Bennett during that period of the unknown.

“Then having someone like Amy be your soft landing like I can’t thank her enough, just welcoming us into her home and our animals,” Eberhardt said. “She did so much work to make room for us and it she treated it like it was what anybody would do.”

Amy Bennett feeds her horse on the property of The Random Ranch.

For Bennett, she too has been in the same shoes as Eberhardt, having to evacuate when a fire came close to her home and her animals.

“It’s something that people really don’t think will ever happen to them is what I found out,” Bennett said. “And I have goosebumps thinking about it because it has happened to me personally.”

Amy Bennett pets one of the many goats on the ranch.

Bennett uses social media to help strangers who are in need of help when the unthinkable happens. She created a Facebook group, 911 Farm and Ranch Evacuations, which provides tools on fire mitigation, trainings, and serves as a connection for those who need assistance when emergency evacuations happen.

“But what we do on that group is we promote all of the local trainings. So, some of the counties will get together and they will have a clinic on trailer training, or they’ll also share fire mitigation,” Bennett stated. “We also identify people like if we needed to leave, where are we going to go?”

Ever since the Black Forest fire, Eberhardt has been a member of the Facebook group and has watched the following and support grow.

“So especially going into fire season, you know, for people to just have that plan in mind, like if anything happens, have that plan, know who’s going to trailer you,” Eberhardt said. “If you don’t own a trailer, which is where Amy comes in, it’s like a saint almost, because her Facebook group is for people… who don’t have trailers, don’t have the necessary means to get their animals out, don’t have a place to go.”

One of the chickens at The Random Ranch.

Bennett is surrounded by 58 animals on The Random Ranch and if a fire were to come her way, she is prepared. Hanging inside the barn is a packet with an emergency evacuation plan and information on the animals who live on the property.

An emergency packet can be found inside the barn with critical information on evacuating and details about the animals living on the ranch.

“We have a file that I update every year, and it’s hard to update it because you think and you get busy,” Bennett said.”…and there’s options. If you have time to trailer options, turn these pages. If you don’t have time to trailer, here’s the plan. So really really focusing and training your animals to load on a trailer. We cannot emphasize that enough.”

After having her own evacuation story, Bennett shared a key takeaway for animal owners to keep in mind to best be ready in the case of an evacuation.

“It was very stressful for everybody involved and the one important thing that helped me on that day, because you can’t think, you literally cannot think at all,” Bennett said. “And so in my phone, I have the word emergency next to everybody that I know will come to help me so that when I can’t think, I can even hand my phone to somebody else because these are my animals.”

The Eberhardt family was able to safely get back to their home with their animals, thanks to the safety that Bennett offered.

A big smile on the face of Ashley Eberhardt as she hugs her horse Mango.

“So many people did go back to their barns and their houses gone, and you know, I’m just eternally grateful to the firefighters who were able to stop it,” Eberhardt said. “But it’s still, you know, when I think about coming home and not having this place, like, sure, we could rebuild and I know many did, but it would never be the same.”