Dozens of hospitals remain at risk at quake hot spot

When the 1994 Northridge earthquake damaged 11 hospitals, California legislators issued an ultimatum to hospital owners statewide:  Fix your highest-risk buildings by New Year’s Day 2008 or the state will shut them down.

The law might have brought a burst of new construction to the Inland Empire and a wealth of tough-walled hospitals designed to survive a major rupture on the southern San Andreas Fault, the most dangerous fault in the state.

That never happened.  Today, nearly four years after the initial deadline passed, more than 40 buildings at 10 hospitals in San Bernardino County are still rated highly collapsible, according to regulators’ reports and records obtained under the state’s Public Records Act.

The findings raise profound questions about the effectiveness of state rules, the ability of hospitals to bankroll construction projects and the chances that hospitals will operate after a major quake.

Championing the delays, the state Legislature repeatedly extended the 2008 deadline to 2013, 2015, even 2020, under pressure from hospitals that said they can’t afford the fixes.  

Hospitals would get even more leeway under a new law passed in April and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, according to draft rules to be reviewed by the state Building Standards Commission.   That worries critics who fear some hospital executives may postpone projects now on the drawing board just because they have more time.

Some local hospital officials say they want to make the fixes but are hobbled by multiple financial woes -- lack of capital, smaller payments from insurers and government programs, more non-paying patients, or all of the above.

“It is the right thing to do, and yet we’re trying to contend with an unfunded mandate and the financial realities of the economy,” said spokeswoman Kathy Roche at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center in Pomona.

Critics say that the hospital industry is favoring cost savings over preparations for the kind of catastrophic earthquake long predicted for California.

“We have to stop gambling.  We’ve been on notice for a long time,” said Bonnie Castillo, government director at the California Nurses Association, which has fought deadline extensions.

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger voiced similar concerns when he vetoed a bill last year, complaining that it continued “the policy of extending seismic compliance deadlines without strong enforcement provisions.”

Locally, the delays have meant fewer fixes to high-risk buildings.