- I knew the morning of the 26th
that there was something wrong.
You could feel it.
(dramatic music) (fire crackling)
It was just a sea of fire coming over the hill
burning into the city.
From the hospital you could see almost
the whole entire thing.
- My name is Ed Zawada.
I am a staff physician at Mercy Medical Center.
I provide care for kidney patients
and ICU patients.
- My name's Kenneth Luke.
I am the Disaster Infectious Diseases
and Base Station Coordinator.
The fire took on a life of its own.
- We kept hearing that this fire was continuing to spread.
This is a city of around 90,000 people.
Thirty thousand people were evacuated.
- [Kenneth] The red area on this map
is the complete burn from the fire
with the winds being so high and so fast
it actually blew embers
over to the other side of the river,
which was where a majority of the homes were burned.
- [Nancy] I finally planted those roses
in the front of the house
and after the fire, they were a puddle
of melted plastic.
That was what was left of our house.
- [Ed] I knew there'd be damage
but total destruction?
- [Nancy] People were surprised that Ed went back
to work the next day.
- You can't sit around and mope.
All that's left now is the present and the future
and that's not a bad thing.
- [Kenneth] Human kindness was displayed
throughout this whole entire event.
Many, many staff lost their homes
or evacuated and just came to work
because they knew that the patients
still needed to be taken care of.
They knew that the communities still needed us.
- From administration to staff,
they were gonna find a way to help and they did.
- [Kenneth] We set up an employee assistance program;
we had a lot a of counselors come in
and set up regular counseling.
They set up funds to help reimburse employees
to get them back on their feet.
- [Ed] They made supplies available,
made some support available,
made some money available.
- [Kenneth] Anybody who was evacuated,
anybody who lost their home,
they helped them out.
- Why are we here if it's not to help each other?
Human kindness, I think is the responsibility
of every person on this planet.