JURUPA VALLEY, Calif. (KNX) — A fire that swept through a rural Jurupa Valley property on Monday left 15 horses and a goat dead.
Emily Sanchez, 32, whose family leases the property in the 10300 block of 54th Street in the Mira Loma section of Jurupa Valley, said she received an alert on her phone early Monday morning from an alarm system that monitors stables housing the horses. She went outside to find the structure ablaze and flames spreading quickly in strong winds.
Her husband and three-year-old son evacuated the small home at the back of the property before it was consumed by flames.
Neighbors who came over to assist were able to free eight of the horses.
“We tried to save as many as we could,” Sanchez told The Riverside Press Enterprise. “We tried to open the stables, but the fire beat us.”
Sanchez said a representative for Southern California Edison told her the fire appeared to have started in a breaker box in one of the property’s five corrals. CAL FIRE has not yet confirmed a cause of the blaze.
“It was heartbreaking,” Sanchez said. There is “so much love for [the horses] that you consider them part of your family,” she added.
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