Hurricane Ivan made furious landfall near Gulf Shores, Ala., early yesterday, tearing into the landscape with winds of up to130 mph, causing coastal storm surge flooding, and spurring tornadoes in several southeastern states. As of Friday morning, little is known about how horses fared in the hurricane. The opinion of many is that horse owners were able to get their horses out of harm’s way after lessons learned from earlier experiences with hurricanes, but it will be several days before veterinarians can adequately assess the hurricane’s effect on horses.

Dana Zimmel, DVM, Florida emergency communication contact for the AAEP’s Emergency and Disaster Preparedness Committee and an assistant professor at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, said Thursday evening, “We had a conference call with the state veterinarian, and he can’t really give us any details about animal injury other than a lot of poultry farms have been affected because the infrastructure is so bad they can’t even get in there to assess the area. So, I don’t have any comments about horse injuries.

“I don’t think we’ll be deployed to that area if we go until probably at least a couple more days, and VMAT people (the American Veterinary Medical Association’s Veterinary Medical Assistance Teams) may go instead of us,” she added.

By Thursday afternoon, Ivan had passed and many horse owners who had moved their animals to higher ground were heading back to their farms, or what might be left of them. Ed Wesson, assistant director of the Garrett Coliseum in Montgomery, Ala., said on Thursday evening that coliseum barns had housed 100 horses during Ivan, and that facility was only moderately affected by winds, which gusted up to 66 mph