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A California family fled Camp Fire. Their home survived — and became a makeshift hospital.

Thirteen people took refuge from the fire in the family’s garage

By
November 21, 2018 at 10:30 a.m. EST

Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Allison Klein.

Surely, the house wouldn’t survive. Or so Desiree Borden and her husband thought as they fled their home in Paradise, grabbing their toddler and dogs in an effort to outrace the California Camp Fire.

The house, however, did not burn to the ground. It was spared — and it saved several lives.

A few hours after leaving, Borden received a Facebook message from nurse Crissy Foster: “I know this is random,” it read. “Is your house at ... Chloe Court in paradise?”

Borden replied: “Yes. Is it gone. Are you ok?”

Then the response came: “We got trapped there. It saved our life.”

Borden was momentarily confused.

Foster explained: “Our ambulance caught fire and we used your garage to keep our patients until we could get to safety…Your garage is a safe haven!”

Borden replied: “I have chills all over my body! I am so happy my home saved you!”

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In an act of desperation, a paramedic had broken into Borden’s home that day, Nov. 8, through a doggie door. The ambulance crew then loaded three patients into the garage. They were joined by others, and ultimately 13 people took refuge from the fire.

Borden’s home was the only one in sight that miraculously had not caught fire, and the medical staff and patients — including a woman who had just had a C-Section — huddled in Borden’s garage as fire “rained down” around them, said Tamara Ferguson, one of the nurses in the group.

You guys OUR HOME SAVED LIVES!!! You have no idea how fast this fire spread, I thought for sure it was gonna be gone! This makes me so incredibly grateful and I want to meet these people! UNBELIEVABLE

Posted by Desiree Borden on Thursday, November 8, 2018

“It was unfathomable how fast the fire was moving, there was no way out,” Ferguson said in an interview with The Washington Post. “The safest thing to do was wait right there.”

Ferguson said that at one point she was sure she was going to die.

“I made phone calls to my family and said goodbye,” she said.

But Paradise Fire Chief David Hawks found them and swiftly gave everyone orders, likely saving their lives. Everyone did as he said. Some people climbed on the roof with hoses, others cleared pine needles from gutters.

“There was fire all around us, the house next door to us was on fire,” Ferguson said. “He told us what to do. He was like, ‘You, go get brush. You, spray down the roof.’ We all worked together.”

The group of 13 people, including three patients, nurses and a pediatrician, hunkered down in the garage for two hours, waiting for the fast-moving flames to pass. Medical staff and fire fighters continued to clear brush and try to keep the house safe. Finally, a sheriff’s van pulled up and the whole group piled in, heading to a different hospital several miles away. Everyone was fine.

It turned out that all the patients and staff had safely evacuated from Feather River Hospital that morning, but the building was badly burned.

Once the nurses returned to safety, Foster sent the Facebook message to Borden. She found her by searching “Borden” on Facebook, and took a guess she had the correct one based on the name on the mailbox.

Borden said she was in “utter shock” when she got the message.

“I was not just in shock that our house made it, but that those people were able to be safe there,” she said.

Just earlier that day, she had driven out of Paradise watching things burn all around her.

“We drove away thinking the house is gone,” she said. “Things were on fire right next to us. Some things got spared and others didn’t, there’s no rhyme or reason to it. It’s so scary.”

Authorities searched for victims of the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif., north of Sacramento, the deadliest wildfire in the history of the state. (Video: Jorge Ribas, Alice Li/The Washington Post)

As for Ferguson, her house in the nearby town of Chico is fine. But she has 14 relatives and close friends staying with her because their homes were claimed by the flames. She wrote her dramatic story about the garage incident in a Facebook post the day after it happened, saying “I will forever be changed by yesterday as so many thousands of others are, but not by what was physically lost, but the reminder that life changes quickly.”

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Borden, also, reflected on the situation emphasizing that more than 70 people are confirmed dead and at least 1,200 more are missing. She wants to let people know that amid the horrors, there were also stories of hope — like her house becoming a safe haven for people in dire need.

“I saw our whole town burning down,” Borden said “I needed to share something positive.”