When 16-year-old Bishop, Georgia, resident Macon Martin realized that his family’s horse barn was on fire, it was the middle of the night, and the teen was in bed.
Despite not having clothes or shoes on, though, Martin didn’t even hesitate to spring into action to rescue over a dozen Clydesdale horses from the inferno. Thanks to his quick actions, he’s being heralded as a hero.
The Martins live about 60 miles outside of Atlanta, Georgia, with their Clydesdales, a breed of horses most commonly recognized thanks to their prominence in Budweiser beer commercials.
It was about 2 a.m. on an otherwise sleepy Thursday morning when disaster hit Classic City Clydesdales. Lightning struck the barn, immediately igniting the massive wooden structure ablaze before the family could even properly wake up to realize what had happened.
Martin’s mother, Shannon, explained that the lightning that caused the blaze startled everyone awake. But it was the teenage son who sprang to action the fastest, preparing to dash and save the horses without wasting even a moment.
“It shook the whole house,“ Shannon told WKYC Studios. ”One minute I am in bed. The next minute I am standing up next to the bed trying to figure out what bomb went off.”
And that was when Macon dashed to the rescue.
“I just ran right out. I had no clothes on, no shoes, no nothing,” he said. “I just jumped in our Gator and I just ran it right into the door.”
Using a farming vehicle, Macon was able to push open the stall doors on the opposite side of the barn, ushering all of the horses out of the blaze and to safety. He likely saved their lives, too; although all of the horses survived, the barn was completely destroyed by the fire and left a family business facing down the prospect of starting from scratch.
As daunting as it may seem to consider just how much work will have to go into a new barn, though, the truly important thing is that all of the Clydesdales survived. That was no easy feat; there were horses as young as 3 weeks old among those that Macon herded out of the burning barn, and one horse in particular—named Phoebe—was expecting a foal amid all the chaos.
“Big horses everybody thinks [are] real tough,” admitted Shannon, “but Clydes are sort of the beauty queens of the draft horse world. They can be pretty fragile.”
The horses were left with a halted show schedule for the summer, which typically consists of plenty of cross-country travel to appear in parades and events from coast to coast. When things go back to normal, though, the dozen-plus four-legged friends the Martins love so dearly will be in perfect shape to get back out and show themselves off to the world. And that miracle is all thanks to the quick thinking—in the middle of the night no less—from her young teenage son.
