Having grown up as close to the Springside campus as possible, Rosaleen Gembala Parsons, MD ’77 was now one of the farthest flung of her classmates. Having moved to Maui in 2021, the chief of radiology at Maui Memorial Medical Center and her husband were just getting settled into a new pace of life on the island when the Lahaina fires occurred in August 2023.
“The hospital overhead speakers began broadcasting ‘code triage,’ indicating mass casualties incoming, and ping alerts exploded on our cell phones,” says Parsons. “This was when we all first learned about the massive fire in Lahaina and returned to our departments in preparation for trauma victims.”
Surprisingly few victims arrived that night. The fires continued to burn.
“Dry vegetation, canyons, and Kaua’ula winds whipped across Maui on August 8. Lahaina, a sacred spot in Hawaiian history, was a maze of twisted streets built for buggies with poorly constructed multifamily dwellings, and dead ends. It has been speculated that the fire was an electrical one and with raging winds it didn’t take long for the 3-mile town to be engulfed and people trapped.”
As the death toll grew, the morgue was overwhelmed while the emergency room was not. The hospital helped with the morgue’s overflow and acted as “last responders.” The moniker, says Parsons, was “not out of disrespect but with honor as their role required the same professionalism and skill attributed to ‘first responders.’ They were quickly overwhelmed with the gruesome Herculean task that had fallen on them.”
The radiology department, located next to the emergency room, took on forensics as bodies came in. The sta, who lost their own houses and were trying to locate loved ones, continued to work and process it all.
“My team was ‘faceless and anonymous,’ just like the victims,” says Parsons. “CNN was not interviewing us, and the covert operation continued.”
Eventually, 101 victims were processed by Parsons’ department and no outside recognition was awarded. She staged her own Hawaiian feast and blessing ceremony for the team.
“A few months after the fires I asked the staff how they were coming to closure and was moved to learn that the group had found peace hiking together in the mountains above Lahaina not far from the 101 crosses on the Lahaina bypass honoring those killed in the fires,” she says. “The ‘nameless and faceless,’ they had helped to bring home.”
Read Parsons' full account here.