Hall Of Fame trainer David Hayes has spoken of the horrific scenes at Lindsay Park in Euroa due to the Longwood bushfire.<\/p>\n
Hayes flew back from Hong Kong to Melbourne last week and arrived at Euroa when the property had been evacuated. He then helped his family fight the fire before landing back in Hong Kong on Sunday morning.<\/p>\n
After a few sleepless nights, Hayes said he slept better back at his apartment in Sha Tin on Sunday night following a few days that were \u201cas bad as you could imagine\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it gets catastrophic, the staff all have to leave and basically, we were to allowed to be there because we own the place, but you couldn\u2019t ask your staff to be there,\u201d Hayes said on Monday morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was only (wife) Prue and I and the twins (Will and JD) on the property with two wonderful maintenance men who wouldn\u2019t leave. Thank God they were there because the water\u2026the pipes would melt and then all of a sudden, the water was shooting in the air, not getting to the stable.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrue and I and the twins had to feed the whole stable and we got the water back on, so we didn\u2019t have to water them.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the main stable at Euroa was protected and therefore escaped the damage, most of the property unfortunately didn\u2019t fare so well. Hayes noted that his son Ben\u2019s house on the farm was wiped out by the fire, as was all the fencing of the 1500 acres.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was tragic to watch,\u201d Hayes said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were putting out spot fires for days, nonstop spot fires, even after the fire had gone through, the trees were flaming and the embers were going everywhere but we just didn\u2019t want a burning ember going through to the main stable.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen the next problem was, with all the fencing down, all the spelling horses were loose, so we were taking it in turn catching horses and trying to put them into safe areas.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was, in the dark, quite harrowing, in amongst the fire storm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sadly, seven horses at Lindsay Park lost their lives due to the fire, but the family were able to save 320 of the thoroughbreds on their property.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was sad that we lost seven, but there were 327 on the property, and only seven passed away,\u201d Hayes said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tragic they did but I think it was a pretty incredible effort to get through.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Melbourne Cup winning trainer spoke of his gratitude for the support that he and his family have received during the most challenging of times.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce the road opened, Troy Corstens had organized a flotilla of volunteers, who came in and were able to get the horses to Inglis, who were so kind to let us get all the spelling horses there,\u201d Hayes said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey literally got them there in two hours.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hall Of Fame trainer David Hayes has spoken of the horrific scenes at Lindsay Park in Euroa due…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,129904,181244,216690,76754,85,216691],"class_list":["post-409177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-david-hayes","tag-euroa","tag-longwood-fires","tag-racing-com","tag-sports","tag-victorian-bushfires-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}