Winter storm causes thousands of dollars of damages at equine sanctuary


CLINTON, Utah (ABC4) — Saturday’s storm caused trees to blow over, tumbleweeds to take over homes and even more damage. Up in Davis County, a horse rescue organization says it’s facing thousands of dollars in damages to their property.

Lazy B Equine Rescue & Sanctuary President and CEO Kelsey Bjorklund said she missed a call on Saturday. When Lazy B shelter manager Gunnar Bjorklund also got a call, Kelsey said she knew something was wrong.

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According to the Bjorklunds, winds were gusting around 50 to 60 miles per hour when they hit Lazy B Saturday morning, causing thousands of dollars of damages to the equine rescue center.

“One of the trees just fell, like, into the pony pasture over there,” Kelsey said she heard over the phone. “It took out the fence and the — your neighbor’s campers are, are they’re totaled, basically.”

In total, the Bjorklunds say the fence on one side of their arena was heavily damaged. Four out of five horse covers were blown away, and the carport they were getting ready to use to hold hay is no longer functional.

“All of our shelter logics and our shelters for our horse stalls kind of tore and all sort of just started to blow away and scared the crap out of the horses,” Kelsey said.

About an hour later, another structure fell over, but was caught by a fence.

“Everything was everywhere,” Kelsy said. “It was, yeah, very chaotic.”

Kelsey said it will cost about $375 to replace each shelter logic, with varying costs for other repairs ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars.

The grand total? An estimated $3,500 in damages to their property, according to the Bjorklunds.

“It could be worse, but it’s definitely an expense that we, we were not prepared for,” Kelsey said.

The next steps for Lazy B are to work closely with volunteers to clean up the mess and raise any additional funds they can to replace the broken or unusable items.

Kelsey said they posted a fundraiser on their Facebook page to ask for donations to replace the carport, panels and shelters.

“Cleaning that up, we’ll definitely take some extra hands,” Kelsey said. “We’ll definitely need more help.”

ABC4.com asked the Bjorklunds if their horses will be OK without shelter, and they said the horses will be perfectly fine, as they have winter coats and blankets prepared for the horses.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC4 Utah.

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