Happy ending: Disabled owner reunited with horse after Cudlee Creek fire
Jessie Smith, who suffers from an incurable auto-immune disease, thought she lost her best friend in the devastating Cudlee Creek bushfires. But her horse, aptly named Fire Storm, had other plans.
Adelaide Hills
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Mount Torrens resident Jessie Smith thought she lost her best friend in the devastating Cudlee Creek bushfires that took over 80 acres of her family’s property.
But her horse, aptly named Fire Storm, had other plans – all thanks to an unlikely rescue mission.
On December 21 – just one day after the fires took hold of the Adelaide Hills, Ms Smith was shocked to find not only her family home safe, but her beloved competition horse was unharmed by the blazes.
After all, it had only been hours earlier that she had kissed her horse goodbye, fearing the worst as she rushed through the flames to safety.
“I remember telling him “good luck buddy, I love you”, and giving him a kiss, before we climbed into the car. By then, the smoke was so thick that we could barely see anything.
“It was hard to leave him, especially when we were half way down the road and saw the full impact of the fires.
“I just thought, gosh, he’s on his own and I genuinely thought I’d never see him again.”
Fire Storm, who has been Ms Smith’s dressage competition horse for the past two-and-a-half years, proved impossible to load on to a float throughout the course of the fateful day, giving his 20-year-old owner no other choice but to leave him behind.
The decision was made more difficult as Ms Smith suffers from Complex Regional Pain Syndrome and Secondary Dystonia.
“When I was 14 I was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease. It’s incurable and over time it’s partially paralysed my right leg – so the horses became my purpose,” she said.
“(Fire Storm) and the other horses are the reason I get out of bed every morning. They are the reason I’m still walking. I’d be in a wheelchair if it wasn’t for them, as they lend me their legs.”
Thankfully, fate was not only on Ms Smith’s side, but her horse’s side too.
While Ms Smith lay awake in Mount Pleasant – where she and her family had evacuated – three Hills locals sought refuge at the Smith home, defending the property with equipment they had on their ute.
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“Once we left we rang a neighbour who said he was staying and dad said to him ‘is there going to be anything left?’ and Nick said there’s not going to be anything from what he saw,” Ms Smith recalls.
“There was no CFS because they could not get out here in time. So we came to the conclusion overnight that everything we had worked for was gone and that (Fire Storm) was gone. All we could hope for was that, if he was gone, he’d just gone quickly and he wasn’t suffering.
“But somehow he survived. When we got home, all the paddocks around him were gone and he was just standing there waiting for someone to come and get him.
“We later found out that a few locals saved our home … and we’re so thankful. Because of them, we still have a home and (the horse) … who is now better behaved than ever and no doubt will now get on to the float.”