‘Absolute hero.’ Trainer says a friend rescued several horses from deadly barn fire
Several horses were able to escape from a deadly barn fire in Lexington Sunday afternoon thanks to a man who was driving by and saw the blaze, according to the owner of the barn.
Wesley Ward, a renowned horse trainer who lost three horses when his barn caught fire Sunday, said a friend of his was driving past when he saw the fire. He opened the doors to the barn, which allowed six of the horses trapped inside to escape. Three others were still stuck inside and died.
The friend, Bruce Flowers, also called 911. The fire department confirmed the barn was fully engulfed in flames when they showed up.
“He’s an absolute hero,” Ward said of Bruce Flowers, the friend who opened up the doors to the barn and called 911. “I can’t thank him enough. He’s the one that went in when the flames were going and opened up all the stall doors. Thank God six of them ran out, but I’m sick to my stomach that three of them died.”
Ward said fire investigators told him a lightning strike hit a utility pole close to the barn, and the intense electricity from the strike went to the barn’s breaker box and exploded. Flowers was driving in the area not long after lightning struck the barn and caused the fire, Ward said.
One of the horses who died was Strike the Tiger, a 15-year-old retired race horse who delivered Ward his first Royal Ascot victory in 2009 at Windsor Castle. Ward was the first American trainer to saddle a winner at Royal Ascot with the victory in 2009.
Ward said they had just recently flown in one of the best equine surgeons in the world, Dr. Wayne McIlroy, to perform a minor procedure on Strike the Tiger to get him prepared to travel back overseas for Royal Ascot. He was going to be a travel companion.
“The trophies that I lost ... can be replaced, but this horse has just been with me forever,” Ward said. “... For this horse to die in a fire, and to die that way after — he was my very first Royal Ascot winner in 2009 as a two-year-old and has had such a great life, and to end it this way is a tragedy beyond words.”
The other two horses who died were Hootenanny, a two-year-old homebred, and Modesto, a five-year-old small stallion to be.
“It’s just a shame that these horses were lost that way,” Ward said.
This story was originally published March 7, 2022 at 10:45 AM.
