Woman names baby after paramedic who saved her in California Camp Fire

A California woman named her newborn daughter after the paramedic who helped rescue her in November from the deadly Camp Fire.

Anastasia Skinner’s baby wasn’t due for another month when she began to feel contractions as she raced to escape the raging wildfire with her mother’s two dogs, The Associated Press reported.

{mosads}Skinner told the AP that she got stuck in traffic trying to leave the Northern California town of Paradise, eventually reaching a gas station where she honked her horn and screamed for help.

“I knew I wasn’t going to make it,” Skinner, 25, told the outlet. “I called my husband and told him goodbye, tell all the kids I love them and make sure they remember me.”

Several good Samaritans came to Skinner’s aid, including women who brought blankets and a retired fire chief who requested a helicopter to air-lift her to the hospital.

Mickey Huber, the assistant chief of operations for Butte County Emergency Services, raced through the gridlock to get to Skinner. Huber told the AP that he knew she couldn’t wait on a helicopter.

“The smoke was thick, and the winds were blowing. The helicopters were having a hard time fighting the fire let alone airlifting patients,” Huber said.

Skinner was having a high-risk pregnancy related to an inherited disorder and had already suffered two miscarriages.

Huber said Skinner may not have survived if she went into labor, so he arranged a three-police car escort to take Skinner to an ambulance.

“My goal was to keep her breathing and get her down the hill,” Huber said. “Two of my ambulance crews were trapped by the fire moments before I got to Anastasia so there was a lot of doubt, a lot of worry.”

Huber sat with Skinner in the back seat and kept her calm until she was able to get to a hospital.

“He was sweet. He told me, ‘I’m a guy. I don’t know what this feels like for you, but I’ll try to help you get you through it,’ ” Skinner said. “Then he would yell at people outside of the car, waving his hat and telling them to get out of the way.”

Her labor ended in the hospital, according to the AP. Smoke inhalation put Skinner’s body under stress and likely triggered contractions, a doctor told Skinner.

Skinner gave birth on Dec. 12 to a full-term and healthy girl, more than a month after the Camp Fire began, AP reported.

She decided to honor Huber for saving her life by naming her child Zoele Mickey Skinner.

“She’s a blessing in every way including what happened at the Camp Fire,” Skinner said.

Skinner and her husband, Daniel, have three other children, ages 8, 6 and 4.

Huber helped with the mass evacuations until the day after he helped rescue Skinner.

“That day was full of a thousand different emotions but that is the strongest memory of the day for me,” Huber said, adding that he was shocked and honored.

Skinner and her mother both lost their homes in the blaze, which destroyed 14,000 homes and killed at least 86 people. It has since become the deadliest U.S. wildfire in at least a century, AP reported.

“All of our history and what we were as a family, everybody knowing your name and all the things about being in a small town are just gone,” Skinner said.

Skinner’s entire family, including their animals, all made it out of the fire safely.

“We can replace all the stuff in our house, but we can’t replace each other,” she told the outlet.