PARADISE, Calif. — Heather Roebuck had just given birth to her baby Hallie by c-section when the Camp Fire bore down on Paradise’s Feather River Hospital.
“It was sheer terror,” Roebuck recalled. “They just stitched me up really quickly.”
Nurses had to jump into action to get Roebuck out safely, which meant separating from her husband and newborn daughter so she could be taken in one of the ambulances.
After driving about a half-mile, Roebuck’s ambulance caught fire.
“I realized I’m not going to make it,” Roebuck said. “I told [my husband] on the phone, 'I’m really sorry' — that I just loved him, and that I wasn’t going to be there with the kids.”
At that moment, a pediatrician came to the rescue.
“He grabbed my backboard, dragged me out on to the street,” she said. “Pitch black.”
With flames encroaching all around a team of nurses and paramedics decided to move everyone to a nearby home – one of the only homes not engulfed in fire. They moved the patients into the garage, and everyone else go to work protecting the property.
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