Marshall Fire: First responder recalls challenges, successes during fire

Dec. 25—Paul Johnson, the EMS division chief for Mountain View Fire Protection District, knew that Dec. 30 was the kind of day that could quickly take a disastrous turn.

"It was high winds, a red flag warning — all those things that you hear kind of have your spidey senses on edge, so to speak," said Johnson, a veteran medic and firefighter.

He had been at his office near Interstate 25 and Colo. 119 that day when he started to hear concerning chatter on the radio. First, there was talk about a fire to the north of Boulder. The so-called Middle Fork Fire, which started near North Foothills Highway and Middle Fork Road, was contained later that same day.

Less than an hour after that fire ignited, Johnson started hearing chatter about another blaze, this time just southeast of the city, near Colo. 93 and Marshall Road. He continued listening as the second fire rapidly worsened, and before long he realized he needed to go to the scene.

"I got in my car and started driving, and in five minutes, it was apparent that this was going to be a major event," Johnson said.

Johnson's first encounter with the Marshall Fire was in Superior. He pulled into the Sagamore subdivision, near the Costco by U.S. 36., just as residents, fire engines and police officers were evacuating the area.

A year later, Johnson still remembers the "sheer intensity" of the wind that day, which reached speeds of up to 115 miles per hour, and the thick cloud of debris that hung in the air.

"What I noticed was that I could feel the heat, I could hear the fire, but I couldn't see it," said Johnson. "I knew I was very close to it. And you know, that's a scary thing, when you can't actually see the fire.

"And then there was so much soot and ash and dirt and smoke and everything blowing around — I mean, literally, you couldn't even really see the front of your car. And I thought to myself, 'This is not a good place to be.'"

In an effort to see where the fire was, Johnson drove up to a high point, above the smoke, and looked down over the town of Superior, but he still couldn't see the fire. The wind was blowing so fast that it caused the flames to lay down sideways, he said, and the smoke and ash were so thick that it was difficult to see where the fire was.

A Mountain View Fire Rescue truck is stationed at the scene of the Marshall Fire on Dec. 30, 2021. (Mountain View Fire Rescue ??

From there, Johnson and his team began their emergency response. In his normal role, Johnson oversees medical operations for auto crashes, injuries, medical emergencies and other situations that require EMS assistance. But on the day of the Marshall Fire, his job was to coordinate medical and firefighting operations near the southern border of the fire — a sector that included the area along McCaslin Boulevard as well as the Rock Creek subdivision in Superior.

The team's evacuation of patients from two hospitals — Avista Adventist Hospital, in Louisville, and Good Samaritan Medical Center, in Lafayette — was a highlight of the day for Johnson.

Evacuating Avista was "sort of an emergency operation, for lack of a better term; it was a very urgent situation," according to Johnson. The fire spread quickly into the area nearby, and although initially Johnson had not believed an evacuation would be necessary, he soon learned that soot, ash and debris had infiltrated the hospital's HVAC system. When the area surrounding the hospital started to catch fire, it became clear Johnson and his team would need to act fast.

"It was sort of a big mental jump, in the middle of a giant wildland fire, to be like, OK, now we have to evacuate a hospital into the fire," Johnson said.

Some 20 patients at Avista who were fit to be discharged were sent home, leaving behind roughly 30 patients who were sicker and would need to be physically moved from the hospital. Those patients required ambulances so they could continue receiving medical support from nurses as they were transferred to another hospital. There weren't enough ambulances at first, perhaps only seven or eight total, and Johnson said his team had to scramble to find more.

Managing the ambulances presented another challenge, since there was only one road in and one road out of the hospital. Firefighters fought the flames that were starting to engulf the access routes, helping protect the roads so ambulances could safely pass through. Johnson said the evacuation, which he described as "very intense," took about two hours

In the end, though, all of the patients at Avista were either discharged or successfully evacuated, and most of those still needing care were taken to St. Anthony North in Westminster. Johnson called the Avista evacuation "highly successful and very fast." Other hospitals have since contacted him to learn what strategies he and his team used.

Meanwhile, in Lafayette, Good Samaritan Medical Center — a much larger hospital — opted to start its evacuation early after monitoring the situation at Avista. Johnson's team successfully evacuated 50 to 60 patients from that hospital for a partial evacuation.

Johnson's team also faced some difficulties in their firefighting efforts as they began to exhaust available resources. There were not enough fire engines, or people, to go around. Louisville and Superior both nearly ran out of water as firefighters continued to douse the flames. Johnson said it was "almost impossible" to make progress on stopping the fire until the wind finally began to subside.

Now, looking back, Johnson is working to improve communications and facilitate quicker evacuations in the community for the next time disaster strikes. Still, he praised his team's handling of the fire, despite all the hurdles they faced. The biggest lesson he learned, he said, was that managing this type of catastrophe was "really all about people helping people" — whether it was neighbors helping each other evacuate or emergency responders teaming up to fight the most destructive wildfire Colorado has ever seen.

"You're just doing the most good you can possibly do," said Johnson.

About this series

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the Marshall Fire, the most destructive in state history. Beginning today, and continuing through Saturday, we will tell the stories of people who lived through this unimaginable disaster, Coloradans for whom its memories remain vivid.