Pa. Firefighters Rescue Horse From Road Culvert

April 1, 2013
Firefighters from Schnecksville Fire Company used a sling and a backhoe to lift a horse named Star out of a culvert in which she was stuck after tumbling down an embankment.

April 01--A horse had to be rescued Sunday after becoming trapped in a roadside culvert in Lowhill Township.

The horse, named Star, was in a pasture off Mill Creek Road, when the wood fence she was leaning against broke, sending her rolling into the embankment, said Darrell Singles, operations officer for the Lehigh Valley County Animal Response Team.

The response team was called in about 1:30 p.m. by the Schnecksville Fire Company, said Singles, who is also a firefighter for the company.

A passerby saw the horse and alerted the owner. Singles described the culvert as just shy of two feet at the edge of the road.

"She was a little shook up," Singles said of the horse, noting that she is at least 30 years old.

Responders trained in large animal rescue used a sling and backhoe to lift her up. The rescue operation took a little more than an hour.

It took about 15 minutes being held upright in the sling before the horse was able to put weight back on her feet, Singles said.

"The struggle of this rolling over and working to get her up, she was pretty tired, pretty beat," Singles said.

The horse seemed to be doing well when the response team left, and she was being checked out by a veterinarian, he said.

-- Samantha Marcus

Copyright 2013 - The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.)

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