The sight is devastating. Charred posts and jagged pieces of tin are jutting into the air from the blackened remains of what was a 40-stall horse barn on the peaceful rolling hills of the Fair Hill Training Center.

Just to the left of one of those contorted tin pieces lay the remains of a horse, one of 24 charred masses still in their stalls after a raging fire that destroyed the barn owned by Bruce Jackson and his partner, Buddy Jones, on Training Center Drive the evening of Nov. 1. Only four of the 28 horses stabled there survived.

Jackson, who lives in Oxford, Pa., five minutes from the barn, arrived shortly after 7 p.m. the evening of the fire. Though still in a daze the following day, he seemed to have his emotions in check. Jones and his daughter Kelly, however, saw the scene for the first time about 1 p.m. the day after the fire. They had driven 16 hours from Dade City, Fla., and though they talked nonstop about what they might see over those hours, “nothing we imagined was as horrible as this,” Buddy Jones said