A new team will be training to evacuate horses and cattle during wildfires, floods and muslides in Orange County — nearly two years after a mutual aid rescue program based out of San Juan Capistrano cut countywide services.
The new Orange County Animal Rescue Team, or OCART, will prepare and deploy volunteers to cart large animals to safety during emergencies. The program is especially welcome news for the sizable equestrian community and thousands of horses living in fire-prone regions, advocates say.
The OC Board of Supervisors recently approved a formal agreement with OCART and $75,000 in seed funding. The money, which comes out of Supervisor Don Wagner’s Third District discretionary funds, will cover costs related to insurance, training supplies, a rescue trailer and volunteer equipment such as safety vests, water buckets and flashlights. El Rodeo Rescue in Brea will oversee the program and funding.
“There was no coordinated team of equestrians to help the county,” Bill Klovstad, El Rodeo owner, said. “This is the first time in county history that a large animal rescue team has been embraced by the county.”
Klovstad said efforts to establish OCART began in late 2023, when the San Juan Capistrano-based Large Animal Rescue Team announced its intention to downsize.
The volunteer group, also known as LART, was formed in 2008 to help equestrians evacuate and shelter horses and other barnyard animals during emergencies. But over the years, LART’s membership dwindled from nearly 300 active volunteers to 50, and San Juan Capistrano officials said the city no longer had the resources to operate a countywide rescue program.
Wagner, who represents OC’s fire-prone central canyon area, said LART’s decision to scale back operations left a “major gap” over the past year in the county’s ability to respond to emergencies. In June 2024, he directed county staff to explore establishing a large animal rescue team, noting that nearby San Diego and Riverside counties already have similar programs.
“We worked with the equestrian community to finally get in place a system to train volunteers and be able to respond to emergency situations,” Wagner said. “This fills a gap in our emergency preparedness.”
A handful of issues prevented LART from providing more effective countywide evacuation services, Klovstad said. Since the group operated under the umbrella of San Juan Capistrano and only had a “handshake agreement” with the county, volunteers were not always called on by OC Animal Care or the Emergency Operations Center to respond to disasters. They often faced roadblocks and access issues when trying to evacuate animals from equestrian facilities.
Since the new OCART has a formal partnership with the county, Klovstad said officials with the OC Fire Authority and Sheriff’s Department will be able to quickly activate volunteers and communicate with them during emergencies.
Dee Dee Friedrich, president of the Yorba Linda Country Riders, who helped develop the countywide rescue program, said she was grateful to Wagner and his team for creating a much-needed resource so that horse owners no longer are left to solely fend for themselves during fire season.
Friendrich said more than 200 volunteers across the county have already expressed interest in participating. The goal is to have all the volunteers trained by the end of February.
Equestrians who were previously involved with LART will receive an abbreviated training, while new volunteers will undergo a more rigorous, mandatory training program that covers how to properly ride a horse, drive a trailer and handle other equipment.
When the 2024 Airport fire broke out, equestrians across the county had to organize among themselves to rescue 300 horses out of the canyons, Friedrich said. She has a history of jumping in to rescue horses during a wildfire, including in her own community during the devastating 2008 Freeway Complex fire.
“The rest of us all knew,” she said, “there was a risk every single day that we didn’t have an official program.”