LOUISVILLE, Colo. — For Allison Brown, the smell of smoke was the first clue that something was burning near Avista Adventist Hospital.
And as the flames of the Marshall Fire crept closer to the Louisville hospital, the threat of evacuation became a reality.
As a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) nurse, Brown's job is to help new moms and take care of the hospital's tiniest, most fragile patients.
"I had one baby, a nurse practitioner had a baby. Other nurses had a baby," she said. "We grabbed rolling carts, we grabbed warm blankets, we got them tucked in. Some babies were still being monitored for oxygen levels, so we tried to grab our portable monitors."
Brown and her colleagues loaded up the infants' medical charts and scrambled to stash mothers' breastmilk in a backpack before fleeing to safety.
The hospital they left was not the hospital they knew, Brown said.
"One other thing that will forever be in my memory is – seeing the ash all over the floor," she said. "Every time a door opened, it was almost like – it was swirling. It was so...it was apocalyptic. It was something out of a nightmare."
The nightmare continued, even outside of the hospital
"The wind was so strong, you almost couldn't see outside," she remembered. "The wind would shift and you would see flames in the distance."
An ambulance took the nurses, mothers, and babies safely outside the fire zone to another hospital.
"When we got to the hospital, the babies reunited with parents. Moms got settled...it was such a sigh of relief," Brown said. "Everyone could breathe again, you know. But man, these babies – like – little tiny babies, but they're strong, they're fighters."
Strength showed up in many ways that day.
"Part of being a nurse is you are in countless situations where things don't go the way you plan, you have to keep your calm," said Brown. "There was no other choice really."
After all, this is her community, too. Brown said Avista Adventist feels like home.
"We know these babies, we're connected to these babies, they feel like an extension of us," she said. "If you take one step back – so many of us live in this community. This is our home that's burning."
In the end, Brown said, she did what had to be done.
"And for some reason, I just knew things were going to be OK," she said.
Now, maintenance crews are working to clean and repair the building after it took smoke and soot from the fire. Hospital officials have not given a timeline for when it will reopen.
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