Eight horses were killed in a barn fire Tuesday at Mor Linn Farm in Walpole, Massachusetts. According to CBS News, the cause of the fire is still under investigation, but because of a thunderstorm happening at the time, lightning is being considered as a possible cause. 

The 150-year old barn, which caught fire around 11:15 p.m., is part of a hunter/jumper facility owned by Catherine and Cormac Kennedy, who are also the program’s trainers. June Gillis-Ahern, a longtime friend of the Kennedys, said the family was home between shows, having just returned from HITS Vermont Summer Festival. The couple and their children were home when they heard a car horn honking—a passerby had driven up their driveway to alert them to the flames.

“The barn that was damaged was very close to their farmhouse, to their actual residence,” Gillis-Ahern said. “It was very fortunate that they were able to contain it, and it didn’t spread to the other barn on their property or their house.”

After calling 911, the couple, their teenager and the passerby who alerted them to the fire worked to evacuate horses from the two-story barn. The horses who died were stabled on the second floor, where Gillis-Ahern said they were able to get only one of the nine horses to safety; the deceased were a mix of personal and client horses. In total, 10 horses, including all those on the barn’s lower level, were evacuated safely.

“They said that they went in and opened the stall doors on the top floor and were trying desperately, but with the smoke, and just the chaos, the horses were really resistant to leaving their stalls,” she said. “It sounds like they tried as hard as they could to get them all out, but unfortunately they weren’t able to.”

No people were injured in the attempt to evacuate the horses. When firefighting crews arrived, the blaze was contained in just over an hour. Fire officials told local news station WHDH that the barn burned more quickly because of hay storage.

On Wednesday, Cormac Kennedy posted to social media about the fire.

“We’re all in a bit of a daze and the feeling of bewilderment and sadness has taken over,” he wrote. “We all hear about barns that burn down for one reason or another but honestly I never thought it would happen to us as the upper barn has stood for over a hundred years [and] has been home to hundreds of our horses and ponies in the last 15 years but more importantly 100s if not thousands of kids and adults have passed through its doors.”

He thanked the emergency responders; friends and neighbors who have helped with clean-up, support and meals; and especially the passerby who alerted them to the fire, whose name he didn’t get in the rush to evacuate horses.

“So what do we do now ? I am reminded what a great late friend of mine John Joe Sommers once said to me ‘you get up in the morning and face it, whatever it is, you face it and deal with it,’ ” he wrote. “So tomorrow is a new day and all we can ask for is that it will be better than today.”

Gillis-Ahern said that the Kennedys had transformed the property and thoughtfully renovated the historic barn. Driving onto the property this morning, it struck her how big the community’s loss was.

“When I first heard about it, and I was able to get there first thing this morning, pulling in and seeing that barn destroyed hit hard,” she said. “It was the first thing you’d see coming up the street. It was just such a big, beautiful barn.”

Neighbors and the local horse community have rallied around the Kennedys and those who lost horses at Mor Linn. Gillis-Ahern said the outpouring of support was immediate.

“I feel like the horse community in New England is so unbelievably strong,” said Gillis-Ahern, who started a GoFundMe in support of the family. “From the moment people were getting news of this, people were piling in there with horse trailers to take the horses that needed to be moved that were displaced. There’s been tremendous offers of donations, of supplies, tack. The New England community—I don’t know what it’s like in other parts of the country, but we’re very fortunate.”