After what felt like an eternity, I found myself hurtling east down Guerneville Road toward the hospital. There was a large orange glow on the horizon, and the smell of smoke was growing stronger. I couldn’t help but notice the steady stream of cars driving west, away from the fire.

There weren’t many cars going in my direction, toward the fire.

The Tubbs Fire rages behind KP Santa Rosa hospital.
Photo: Wes McBride

Entering the Fire Zone

My normal route was blocked. The exit was blocked; there was a police car stationed there with lights flashing.

I showed my ID, and the officer let me through. I thought back to all the times I’d taught staff to keep their IDs with them. I always promise it will get folks through a roadblock, and it had. I later learned many of our hospital administrators were not so lucky. It didn’t matter what they showed or said, they were turned away at other entry points because they were in active fire zones.

I kept driving. A sea of flashing lights and emergency vehicles appeared before me only a half block from the hospital. I turned left into the parking lot, wound my way around the buildings, and parked in the garage.

The smoke was incredibly thick when I got out of the car, and a security guard was controlling access to the emergency department.

That’s when things get fuzzy. My brain didn’t register the people carrying their belongings walking the other way or the embers flying through the air. And although I walked right past the Journey’s End mobile home park on my left, only yards away from the hospital’s property line, my brain didn’t register anything unusual there either, despite the fact it was almost completely engulfed in flames.

Here’s what I do remember: the smoke in the emergency department and hospital hallways; the calm, focused intensity in the hospital command center; and the decision to evacuate the hospital when the fire department told us it was making “a last stand.” I remember the cadre of police officers who showed up when we needed to step up the evacuation even further and how we went floor to floor in teams to clear out the bedbound patients. My brain finally registered the fire as I passed a fourth-floor window and saw the flames at our hospital’s property edge.

Evacuation

We staged patients by the freight elevators and took them down one by one. Once downstairs, we lined them up in the hallway to await transport. We assigned one staff member, from MDs to RNs to environmental service workers, to every patient and documented each patient as they went through the lobby doors onto the ambulances and city buses waiting to take them to safety. The patients and staff were amazing; there was no panic and very little noise.