A California nurse shared chilling details about the harrowing hours she and fellow medical staff spent evacuating a burning hospital and working to save their patients asdeadly fires ravage parts of the state.
Tamara Ferguson, a labor and delivery nurse at Adventist Health Feather River in Paradise, California, wrote ina Facebook postlast week that she saw an “orange glow outside” when she arrived at work on Thursday, but was told the growing Camp Fire wasn’t “super close.”
“Within an hour or less, I was going room to room telling moms and dads to get up, wrap their babies and we had to go,” Ferguson recalled in the post detailing the day’s events. “Wrap their babies up and we had to go..no time to grab personal belongings …we raced towards the ER and lined up.”
Ferguson wrote that the patients included a mother who had just given birth via C-section, elderly men and women and other “critical” patients. As the workers rushed to put patients into ambulances and even their own cars, they watched the Camp Fire wreak havoc on the hospital.
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Courtesy Tamara Ferguson
“We turned down a road into a driveway and stopped,” Ferguson continued in her post. “We all got out of the ambulance, and moved patients to the garage of the only house not burning, layed (sic) them down and tried to reassure their scared faces, while hiding ours.”
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She said she was “scared, hopeless, and desperate,” as she watched the flames surround the home where they had taken the patients. However, she and another staff member, Chrissy, did all they could to help clear the smaller flames and provide patients with food and water.
“We need to save our patients and ourselves, if we were going to die today we would at least do it protecting others and do everything we can to live and we did!” she continued.
But she did. The group returned to the Paradise hospital where they rushed to load the patients (and themselves) into waiting sheriff’s vans, police cars, and ambulances to be escorted away from the burning hospital once and for all.
At least 31 people have died so far as several fires burn on both ends of the state, according toCBS News. Several families have lost their homes and personal belongings in the blaze, including Ferguson who hasset up a Facebook fundraiserto rebuild.
To help victims of the California wildfires, visit theAmerican Red Cross, theLos Angeles Fire Department Foundationand theCalifornia Fire Foundationfor more information.
source: people.com
