Stable fire kills 29 horses at American racetrack
A total of 29 horses have died and another 26 were rescued after fire tore through stables at a US racecourse on Monday morning.
Three horse barns adjacent to the Charles Town Races in Ranson, West Virginia, were set alight in the blaze at 4.20am.
The wooden barns were not owned or managed by the racecourse but were rented out to the owners of horses that trained or raced at the track.
The dead horses belonged to a number of different trainers.
One, Ronney Brown who lost 7 horses in the fire, told a local newspaper that he was “in shock”.
The cause of the fire is still being investigated.
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A self-confessed newshound, farmer’s daughter and journalist of many years' experience, Charlotte worked on regional papers before joining H&H in 2007. A regular rider, she visited Ireland in 2010 to investigate the fate of Irish horses through the recession, to much acclaim, and reported from the FEI General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro in 2011. She left Horse & Hound in March 2013.