Watch: Heroic group save eight horses from Stourbridge fire

A heroic group of horse riders from Sugarloaf Equestrian Centre on Sugar Loaf Lane in Stourbridge saved eight horses from the fire yesterday evening (August 13).

Two riders from the centre have recounted how they managed to act quickly and save the horses from the blaze.

Abbie Harvey, 28, Veterinary Nurse from Kidderminster shared the experience of saving the horses alongside Lizzie Williams, 20 from Kingswinford.

• Read more: Watch: Horses get evacuated after Stourbridge hit with 40 acres of fires

The women didn’t think of their safety ahead of the horses and said, Abbie said “We're massive animal lovers anyway. Horses mean so much to us that there was no doubt in any of our minds that we were not going to not help these horses.”

Abbie Harvey, 28 from Kidderminster told the Express & Star: “Yesterday, we were at our riding school, Sugarloaf Equestrian Centre on Sugarloaf Lane in Stourbridge and I noticed some smoke coming over, so I thought, I'll drive down see what's going on see if anyone needs help. I managed to get to Norton Road and saw that the flames were engulfing the road.

“There was fire engines coming past me. There was police coming past me. At this point, I was in the way so I started driving back to our yard.

“Our yard manager, Helen Walker, was driving the other way with some other girls in the car telling us to turn around because they were off to rescue the horses.

“I managed to turn around, park my car, and then ran over the road to help with the horses.

“At this point, there was Izzy Williams, Charlotte Griffiths, Sophie Village, Ellie Village, they were already in the field getting the horses. Helen Walker was there as well with the gate helping us.

“We ran in, managed to get them, the field was on fire at this point, they were really good horses and managed to catch them straight away, and started to take them into the cul-de-sac just opposite.

“The smoke was what was really getting to us, we were coughing.

“You could see the horses were struggling a little bit.

“At this point we were said right, we need to get off this cul-de-sac, started walking up Racecourse Lane. We had a car come down towards us and a man said the road's on fire.

“The house, you can't see it but the house behind us was on fire. At this point we were trapped, luckily the horse box came and as we were all loading them, the flames were behind us at this point.

“We couldn't see it because the smoke had come over at that point and it was really scary.

“The horses at that point were loaded onto the trailer and lorry.

“The police were then trying to evacuate everyone, so we asked if they needed our help.

“We helped them evacuate everyone, we were running around knocking on doors, getting everyone to get out because at this point it was in their gardens.”