The Park Fire — now California’s fourth-largest wildfire — started on July 24 and has consumed more than 425,000 acres in Tehama and Butte counties. Fortunately, there have been no injuries or deaths attributed to the blaze.
As they do, seemingly without fail, hospitals in northern California have been ready for all that has come their way during this crisis. Reports are surfacing of patients with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease who need additional support due to deteriorating air quality. There are also reports of behavioral health providers proactively calling patients out of concern that many would be reliving the painful traumas of the Camp and Dixie fires, which destroyed whole communities.
While the Park Fire has not posed any significant threat to hospitals directly, health care workers are not exempt from the need to evacuate certain areas, and they deserve our thanks and admiration for their commitment to patients despite the uncertainty for their homes and their families.
From massive wildfires to mudslides to other natural disasters, these are the scenarios that California’s hospitals prepare for all the time. Every hospital has a comprehensive disaster readiness plan and practices the implementation of that plan regularly.
This is what hospitals are made to do.
Every hospital knows that its role during a disaster is to care for the ill and injured, and to be perhaps the one bright spot in the darkness. Hospitals are the places people can turn to when they have nowhere else to go.
For that — for being there all the time, no matter how trying the conditions, or how hard things get — hospitals deserve our deepest gratitude. They never close. They never quit. They never turn their back.
California will get through this fire with the help of hospitals. And the next time disaster strikes, hospitals will be there again — strong and lasting protectors for anyone who needs help.
