HERRIMAN, Utah (ABC 4 News) - Many of the homeowners and ranchers in Herriman have their own livestock, but it was the animals at Ching Farm that were a major concern. This animal sanctuary has everything from emus to ostriches, and as ABC 4's cameras saw, it wasn't exactly easy to get them all rounded up.
As the animals' stress levels rose, getting them corralled proved to be a difficult task.
"Oh they're very scared especially with the helicopters and whole bunch of people here and they've been hearing sirens and it really does spook them," said one volunteer.
Thankfully the organization had volunteers like Dee Oakeson there to give them a hand.
"We live down in Herriman and we've got horses just coming down to help get trailers here and we're loading them up," Oakeson said.
One by one, trailers headed down to the Salt Lake County Equestrian Center to put the animals up for the night.
"Obviously it's never a good thing to be evacuating animals from a wildfire we have a lot of volunteers putting in a lot of effort, most of the animals have already been evacuated," said volunteer Jeremy Beckham.
He said the group left the most difficult animal for last, the ostriches.
"They’re big and powerful and they don't like people trying to handle them," Jeremy said.
He said the stir-up is not ideal, but it has to be done.
If you have animals in need of shelter for the night, you can bring them to the equestrian center as well. It's at 2100 West, 11400 South in South Jordan.
