Quick thinking by a trio of animal lovers and a firefighter saved a baker's dozen of horses from a barn fire in Washington County last week.

On the night of Dec. 14, fire broke out in a barn at the Greenmoor Common Equestrian Center near Canonsburg. As they do every evening, horse owners Sandee and Bill Hughes, of Upper St. Clair, arrived at the barn around 8:30 p.m. to care for their horse Ari, a 21-year-old white Arabian. Mr. Hughes took Ari to the center's indoor arena across from the upper barn for exercise, while Mrs. Hughes cleaned out the stall.

Allison Frey, of Washington, who also boards a horse there, was in the barn feeding horses when she smelled something burning.

Mrs. Hughes and Ms. Frey followed the odor to the stairway leading up to the barn's hay loft.

"As I looked up, there was a large orange glow coming from the stairway. And I yelled, 'Call 911!' " Mrs. Hughes recalled.

The three then ran from stall to stall grabbing horses and leading them to an outdoor paddock.

Mrs. Hughes said the three never stopped to think that they might be in danger.

"We each would take a horse and open up the gate and put the horse in. And then you'd have to close the gate so the horse wouldn't run out, then another horse went in and we were running and doing that. In between, my husband called 911,'' she said.

By the time the fire department arrived, all but one of the 13 horses had been safely rescued from the burning barn. Pearl, a 15-year-old Appaloosa mare, would not leave her concrete stall outside of the barn.

"Whenever horses are in danger, they think of their stalls as a protection area. So, it was very hard getting them out of the stalls to put them in the outdoor paddock. [Pearl] was running and running around in the stall and they could not catch the horse to get it to go out," Mrs. Hughes said.

"When I got there, [firefighters] said she was still in there and she was dead. But then someone yelled, 'She's still alive' and firefighters blew water in there. [The horse] was just standing there," said Fran Mocker, of Bethel Park, who owns Pearl and leases the property.

That's when another hero came to the rescue. Paul Williams, a horseshoer and member of the North Strabane Township Fire Department's Rapid Intervention Team who is certified in large animal rescue, ran into Pearl's stall, put a rope around her neck and led her to safety.

Mr. Williams said that he believed Pearl was saved by the large amount of water that firefighters used to saturate the stall.

Although the barn and all of the equipment inside was destroyed, the other buildings on the property received little or no damage.

The fire spread slightly to the adjacent riding arena, but firefighters acted quickly to limit damage to some melted siding. The lower barn on the property, where another 18 horses were housed, was not affected by the fire.

Firefighters from Lawrence, Cecil, Upper St. Clair, Peters and Fairview, in addition to North Strabane, were at the scene.

Pearl was the only horse that was injured: a few burns and smoke inhalation. She is being treated and is expected to make a full recovery.

The horses are now boarded at Mingo Creek Farms in Nottingham.

An estimate of the damages has not yet been determined. Temporary stalls are being installed so that the horses can be brought back soon. Work on a new barn is expected to start next week and be completed in about six months.

A state police fire marshal is investigating the cause of the fire.

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