Trial by Fire: HTM Team Demonstrates Valor in the Face of Uncertain Odds.

On Nov. 8, 2018, Rob Harry, site director of clinical engineering for Adventist Health Feather River, and his team—BMET III Marc Silver, BMET III David Falcon, and Network Systems Specialist Jared Wilson—helped evacuate at least 45 patients from their hospital as a wildfire swept through the town of Paradise, CA, leaving them with little time to escape themselves. The Camp Fire, as it became known, would go on to become the most destructive and deadly wildfire in California history, killing at least 85 people, destroying 14,000 residences, and charring an area the size of Chicago. “It hit within minutes, and within minutes, the whole town was gone,” Harry said, recalling the fire that would destroy his community, his hospital, and ultimately tear his team apart. “There was only time to evacuate—and not even enough time for that.” A Day Like Any Other Fire is nothing new for those living and working in Paradise. “We’re fairly used to it,” said Wilson, whose family has lived on the ridge since the 1930s. “We live in Paradise. It’s common.” In fact, on Wilson’s first day at Feather River, he had to help evacuate the hospital because of a fire in the same area. “It burned down to the river and stopped. It never jumped over to the other side,” Wilson said of the Humboldt Fire that sprang up in July 2008. Last year’s Camp Fire, however, was a different beast. Just as members of Feather River’s healthcare technology management (HTM) team were starting their day around 6:30 a.m., the Camp Fire began kindling in a wooded area near Pulga, about seven miles northeast of Paradise. Silver arrived at the hospital around 7 a.m. “As I was unloading my car, I kept hearing plunks hit the ground and these little bumps hit my car,” he remembered. “I look, and Amber Logan was director of