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Coming off a big Saturday-night win at the storied Woodbine Racetrack with thoroughbred Legal Heir, horse trainer Steve Owens could not have expected the phone call he received yesterday morning.

It was shortly after 3 a.m., his wife Beverly said. He was already awake and preparing to leave for the track, just as every horse trainer does every day.

But his assistant phoned to say there was a fire in barn 7 and 7A -- the H-shaped barn that is home to 13 of the thoroughbreds Mr. Owens has trained.

The destruction was unimaginable.

"My husband lost every horse in his barn," Ms. Owens said yesterday afternoon from the family's home in Kleinburg, Ont., just north of Toronto. "They're our family members, you know? They're our babies. We've just stopped crying now."

Yesterday, at the six-barn complex on the backstretch of Woodbine -- home to the Queen's Plate, among other famous races -- the shock of trainers, owners, grooms and passersby was commensurate with the tears shed by those who lost both horses and, perhaps, livelihoods in a massive fire that may have killed as many as 30 horses.

"The common bond we all have is the love of the horse," said owner Reade Baker, whose horses are housed nearby. "They become your life. Not part of your life. Your life."

Trainer Clif Hopmans told the Daily Racing Form the toll would have been much higher had it not been for the heroic actions of Ernest Twambe, who was one of the first to raise the alarm. "He's a refugee from Zaire who started walking hots for me a couple of months ago," Mr. Hopmans said.

"He was living in my office -- he smelled the smoke, and called 911. Then he went around getting the horses out of their stalls; he probably saved 30 or 40 horses' lives."

Mr. Twambe was in Etobicoke General Hospital yesterday, recovering from smoke inhalation.

Witnesses said that many of the horses, who regularly spend as many as 23 hours a day in the stalls, grew fearful and confused and ran back to their stalls, which they mistook for the safest place in the chaos.

"They go back to their home," said an owner who arrived at 4:30 a.m. to discover he'd lost his horse in the fire.

"If you don't close the door, they'll run back in."

Horses that made it to safety were placed in other stalls throughout the complex that is home to thousands of horses.

Others were not so lucky.

A trainer who refused to give his name said he saw horses with blood pouring from their nostrils after the smoke they had inhaled caused damage to their lungs. They were rushed off in horse trailers to the Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph, Ont.

John Tait, director of the college, said yesterday that about 10 horses were now being treated. Each horse is being held in a separately ventilated room and receiving high-quality oxygen.

"I know [the staff]have been pretty busy all day," Mr. Tait said. "Some fairly serious cases, some not too bad. We're not sure how many more we may get."

Fire investigator William Hiscott said yesterday that the steel roof, block walls and drywall ceiling ensured that the fire had "no place to go but to radiate throughout the structure."

"If you trap the heat, it's going to be travelling quicker," he said.

Thirty fire trucks rushed to the stables to find the barn engulfed in flames that reached as high as three storeys. Some witnesses said the first signs of fire came from the middle of the building but spread quickly.

Mr. Hiscott estimated that the fire reached temperatures of 2,000, but said he wouldn't be able to tell definitively until the Ontario Fire Marshal's Office can enter the barn and begin its investigation. The cause of the fire is also unknown.

Yesterday afternoon, the barn remained cordoned off behind yellow police tape as firefighters doused the still-smoking structure.

Mr. Hiscott estimated the damage to the building at $1.5-million. The value of the horses that died could be as much as $5-million alone.

"You can't replace those horses with money," a devastated trainer said before collapsing in tears with friends in the parking lot of the stables. "They mean more than money."

Woodbine spokesman Glenn Crouter said yesterday many horses presumed lost in the chaos of the fire may be in other barns. He said others may have been taken to farms nearby.

"No one knows for sure until they can get that roof off," he said of the charred strips of steel that now lie slumped over the walls of the barn.

In July, 1990, the same barn burned and six thoroughbreds died in a suspected case of arson for which no one has ever been arrested.

Identifying which horses died inside the building yesterday will be a matter of searching for tattoos and looking at dental records, the same way that human remains are identified, Mr. Crouter said.

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