The Christian Science Monitor

When wildfire strikes, an army of animal lovers rushes to action

Pepper is in safe hands with Yumi Sakaida (left), whose family cares for the horse in Topanga, California, and Megan Silveira (right), a longtime large-animal evacuation volunteer with the Los Angeles County Animal Care and Control office, Oct. 29, 2019.

When weather forecasters in Southern California sent out an “extreme” fire warning starting Tuesday night, Patricia Rendon did not wait for the flames to arrive. 

She called her longtime friend Pam Sakaida in Topanga, California, on whose property she is boarding her horse, Pepper. Given the forecast of hurricane-force gusts, and that the evacuation zone from the Getty fire in Los Angeles was moving toward Topanga, they decided to evacuate her gray mare. Same for

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