Il Nuovo Postiglione - Scramble to shelter animals from Los Angeles wildfires

While some people just got in their cars and drove out of the danger zone, Gruss had to wrangle more than two dozen frightened horses, as embers swirled in 100-mile (160-kilometer) -an-hour winds.

"The last horse we had to get out of the barn... it was pretty bad," Gruss told AFP at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center, where hundreds of animals have been brought this week.

"It was very smoky. It was dark. I couldn't see where I was," she recalled. "Both the horse and I were tripping over things, branches, whatever was on the ground."

Gruss said coralling the animals was so challenging, she feared at one point she might not make it out alive.

"I thought I might have been one of those casualties," she said, as tears rolled down her face.

"You hear about the person that goes in to get the last horse and doesn't come out."

More than 150,000 people have been forced from their homes by the huge blazes tearing through the city in a tragedy that has killed at least 16 people and changed the face of Los Angeles forever.

With so many people ordered to get out of the way of the advancing wildfires and needing to take their animals with them, capacity is strained.

"We've never seen anything like this," said Jennie Nevin, director of communications for the Los Angeles Equestrian Center.

"The first night was very busy and chaotic. Lots of people coming from all over."

- 'A whirlwind' -

Dozens of people milled around the barns Saturday at the equestrian center, where donkeys, pigs and ponies have also found shelter.

Tarah Paige, a professional stuntwoman, had brought her three-year-old daughter to visit their pony Truffles and her miniature cow Cuddles -- a TV star in her own right who has appeared on several programs.

"It's been a whirlwind," said Paige, for whom the equestrian center has been an oasis in the midst of an unimaginable catastrophe.

Nevin says there has been an outpouring of support and people offering their services to help care for the menagerie.

"It really takes a village," she said. "It takes the community."

Across the Los Angeles sprawl there are activists, veterinarians and volunteers working to rescue and care for animals made homeless in the tragedy, including some that were injured.

The Pasadena Humane Society received about 400 animals from Altadena, where the flames have already consumed more than 14,000 acres (5,600 hectares).

One of their patients is a five-day-old puppy that was found in the ruins of a building, its ears burned.

Annie Harvilicz, founder of the Animal Wellness Center, says she has hardly slept a wink all week.

As the fire spread through the upmarket Pacific Palisades, Harvilicz posted on Facebook that she was happy to take in animals.

The post "exploded," she said, and dogs, cats and even a rabbit began arriving.

With flames still raging out of control, the calls for help have not stopped.

But, she thinks, even when the firefighters have quelled the blaze, the slow-motion tragedy will roll on.

"There's gonna be more pets found, more pets injured, with smoke inhalation and burns that we're gonna start to discover as some of the fire recedes," she said.

"This is just the beginning."

M.Costa--INP