Scripps Health to Send Second Medical Response Team to Help Camp Fire Victims

This is KPBS midday edition. I'm Jade Hindmon. I'm Maureen Cavanaugh. Seeing pictures from the burn area of the Camp Fire is shocking. The town of Paradise looks incinerated with cars and homes burned to the ground and the deadly toll of the fire is still being determined. With 88 people confirmed dead and more than 200 missing. If pictures from that scene are bad imagine being there in person. Scripps Health nurse Debra McQuillen and members from the first Scripps medical response team are just back from the camp fire devastation. She's also the chief operating executive at Scripps Mercy Hospital. And Deborah joins me now. Welcome to the show. Thanks Maureen. Give us a sense of the magnitude of the health needs currently facing victims of the camp fire. Well when we were there we were primarily seeing people in the shelters some of the shelters had as many as 500 people. It was a variable number of people that would come to us for medical assistance but we were we were primarily seeing people as we did when we were on the Gulf Coast in Katrina that needed their primary healthcare needs met at that point they needed their prescriptions refilled. They needed to get reestablished with a primary caregiver. They needed to have their medical needs evaluated at that time and they were particularly being impacted by you know the stress and the closeness of their living conditions so that really exacerbated conditions that people already had. Like diabetes or respiratory issues and other chronic issues like hypertension there were also reports of noro virus outbreak is that common. In a situation like this it is relatively common. I mean we hear about norovirus for instance on cruise ships any anywhere where there are sort of crowded communal living conditions if you will. Noro virus can spread and we did see that in each of our shelter environments. But I have to say that both from a CalMac and all of the medical volunteers standpoint and the shelter operators themselves and working with the evacuees who were very invested in staying healthy it was really managed well. And it did not turn into a an emergency situation. What about the air quality and its effect on fire victims. You know the air quality definitely had its effect I mean when we got there on the 15th the air quality was still very very poor even in the Chiko area because we were right on the border of the of the burn area. I mean you could you could taste the air even in the tents that we were living in and certainly inside the shelters as well. So we were seeing people who did have chronic lung conditions that were being exacerbated. We were getting frequent respiratory therapy treatments. One of our main goals was to keep the shelter evacuees and the survivors out of the local emergency rooms so that they could serve those who had no more major injuries or more major illnesses not only from the fire but continue to serve their communities as well. Deborah can you walk us through a day at the shelter where you were volunteering. Who did you meet there and what did they tell you about their experiences surviving the camp fire. Certainly. So one thing that I do want to make very clear is that we were supporting upwards of eight shelters around a couple of different counties. Butte County. And Glen County and so there were slightly different experiences that each team member had. But I think the common elements were that the evacuees the survivors one were very grateful that they had medical care that were there that was there at their site that they could access easily and that we were able to help connect them to the other resources that they needed. As I said in terms of getting their prescriptions refilled mental health obviously is a growing issue. There are some patients some some individuals who you know obviously were already under extreme stress. And as the week wore on people were kind of realizing that this is going to be a long haul for them. Is there a particular experience that someone shared with you that you that you remember or that really shook you. Well there were a couple of experiences I think one from another shelter. One of our pharmacists ran across a man who a 94 year old man I believe a veteran who had lost everything in the fire and he had been ill he had had norovirus. And so the shelter and the medical volunteers we had put them in isolation. And and as he was being moved back out into the general population he realized that some of the last belongings that he had with him including his I.D. and his wallet were missing. And we determined they determined the team determined that that had probably been swept up into the trash. And our team was so thoughtful and so cared so much about the fact that this was you know an extreme insignificant loss to him on top of everything that he had gone through that they actually went and were able to locate his belongings. And I think that's one of the things that we all recognize is that people have lost so much and that the things that were important to them that they had retained and obviously their loved ones their pets but also some of the material items that they had been able to bring with them. Now had such significance in their lives that we needed to treat those with reverence as well. You mentioned that a second scrips Response Team has been deployed to the area. How long do you think it will be before life gets back to something like normal for these fire victims. I think it's going to be a very long time for some of them. We know that the you know the list of missing persons has gone down significantly. Thank goodness. And also the shelter residents has started to decrease as people are repatriated with their families. So that is happening. But there is a large population of elderly medically fragile people who chose to live in relative isolation or chose to live in and an outside community if you will that really don't have those connections. And so for those people this transition is going to be a very long time. I've been speaking with Deborah McQuillen lead nurse from the first to Scripps medical response team that deployed to help victims of the campfire. And Deborah thank you very much. Thank you so much Maureen. It was my pleasure.