NEDERLAND — As Pam Harrington prepared to flee approaching flames from the Cold Springs fire on Saturday afternoon, she suddenly looked up to see a wall of black smoke before her.
The blaze she had smelled minutes earlier as she was doing chores at a barn with her 5-year-old daughter had moved in more quickly than she could have expected. After ensuring her daughter was safe in a vehicle headed out of the area, she turned her attention to her horses — a Mustang and her daughter’s pony — only to realize her only option was to ride them to safety.
A horse trailer she was hoping to use was missing a part and a pickup nearby was too small to haul the load. It was 2:15 p.m., and there .
Harrington said she hopped on the Mustang — Sunny — and pulled her daughter’s pony, Abby, in tow, walking them on a road out of the area. Quickly, however, the fire was on her heels.
“All of the sudden, the smoke lifted and everything turned really orange,” she said Monday in an interview in Nederland. “I mean the air seemed like it was orange. Everything got really still and really, really, really clear. There was a brief moment of that calm when you’re in the middle of a really intense situation and everything slows down.”
As the smoke lifted, she kicked her horse to start running “and in that instant there were flames everywhere.”
“Everything was just fire all around me,” she explained. “I had to get out and the only way out was through.”
Miraculously, Harrington and her horses were unscathed.
Of the hundreds of people forced to evacuate Saturday because of the rapidly spreading wildfire, many have told similar stories about how quickly flames were upon them. Several said they were notified by neighbors of the approaching flames before receiving reverse 911 calls, only to look out and see the approaching blaze.
Monica Cantu was camping in the are where the wildfire began, down the road from their home, when the sky around them turned black.
“We thought there was a car accident,” she said Monday outside the evacuation center at Nederland High School. “One second you’re having fun and the next we’re running.”
As they fled, Cantu and her family left behind their wallets, cellphones, camping supplies and even a camper. She said they were hurried away from the area by two park rangers as flames were just 30 feet away.
Cantu, whose home is in the evacuation zone, has been living with her family out of a Toyota Tundra pickup truck.
“We’ve been going from campsite to campsite, shelter to shelter,” she said.
Harrington, who teaches horseback riding and boards horses, has also been evacuated not only from her home, but from another house which she is under contact to buy. She has been staying with friends as hundreds of firefighters continue to battle the 600-plus acre blaze, which has claimed five homes and three outbuildings.
Her story has become ubiquitous in Nederland, where residents have been trading stories of close calls.
Harrington said she feels riding her horses to safety was just something anyone would do. She has guilt about leaving two other horses that she was boarding behind because by the time she was ready to turn back for them, there was too much fire.
Luckily, they survived in a pasture and have since been rescued from the burn area.
“You just didn’t have a choice,” Harrington said as her daughter clamored in her lap outside of Nederland’s co-op. “You do what you have to do and sometimes the only way to do things is to go right through the middle.”