‘Nightmare’ at San Luis Rey Downs leaves pain, promise

BONSALL, Calif. — The Lilac Fire that ravaged northern San Diego County incited panic at San Luis Rey Downs as the flames flickered, leaving the horse training facility in profound pain.

At least 46 horses died that day, falling from fire, smoke inhalation, heart attacks and injuries. Horse hide was found far from the flames, on an aluminum gate along the track’s inside rail — a jarring sign of the chaos that swirled.

What did San Luis Rey endure in those fateful, flame-filled hours on Dec. 7 as the fire ambushed stalls holding about 450 horses at the 240-acre facility?

Walk outside Barn E, where the car of severely burned trainer Martine Bellocq was gutted by flames so white-hot that wheel rims melted into molten puddles as its owner rushed to save as many of her four-legged family as possible.

Visit the area near Barn L, where someone jumped from a feed truck to fight the fire before the vehicle mysteriously was engulfed along an open roadway — reduced to nothing more than a frame and axles.

Kevin Habell, San Luis Rey’s general manager, pulled a small, stuffed horse with a hand-written note pinned to it from the back of his truck while touring the charred site Thursday. Workers said the gift was dropped at the gate by a young girl after the merciless fire reshaped so many worlds.

“May these sweet angels run free around God’s track

“So sorry for your loss

“Our thoughts and prayers are with you all

“Your Bonsall neighbors”

“Oh man, I’m going to cry again,” Habell whispered.

The fire burned out. The human spirit? Hardly.

Decency proved far more difficult to douse.

What should I do? The question raced through the mind of Leandro Mora, the right-hand man of trainer Doug O’Neill — the architect of Kentucky Derby winners Nyquist and I’ll Have Another.

Mora, coughing and eyes stinging, held on to two horses as he tried to decide how to handle the dire situation.

“Right then, two horses ran by,” said Mora, a 40-year veteran who paused at the harrowing image. “They were burned from end to end, the hair was gone and they were screaming. That’s the moment when I made the decision to let our horses go.

“That’s going to be in my brain the rest of my life. That’s ugly. Ugly stuff.”

Trainer Peter Miller, who had been at Los Alamitos, was forced to wait outside San Luis Rey for an hour as police locked down the area. When he finally navigated his way onto the property, the scene stunned.

“It was like a nightmare,” said Miller, an Encinitas resident who had more than 75 horses stabled at the facility. “Like a living nightmare. Words can’t describe seeing the horses in their stalls. The smoke and the fire were still going. It was surreal. It was worse than I ever could have imagined. Much worse.”

Horrors sometimes revisited those dealing with the crisis. California Diamond, a Miller-trained horse who won nearly $500,000, had been set free, only to return to his stall — and an unwitting death sentence.

“That’s their home,” Miller reasoned. “He was one of the coolest, neatest, kindest gamest horses I’ll ever have. When I saw him in there, my heart sank.”

Yet in that horrible wake, goodness stubbornly refuses to relent.

Horse owner Joe Ciaglia bought 200 pairs of shoes to give away to displaced workers. An anonymous donor cut a check for $28,000, allowing Del Mar employees to hand out $400 envelopes to 70 workers this week.