One of the most frightening aspects of an major earthquake in the Bay Area is the potential destruction of some of the big local hospitals. “If it happened today, we’d have no SF General, no Kaiser,” Assembly Member Tom Ammiano told me. St. Lukes? I wouldn’t bet on it. And considering the conditions in Sendai, that’s not a pleasant prospect.
State law requires all hospitals to undergo seismic upgrades by 2013 — but the deadline keeps getting pushed back. Ammiano said there are more delays pending, more bills in the Legislature that would allow some operators (particularly private hospitals) to miss the deadline without penalty.
Both Stanford and CPMC has tried to claim that they can’t do the work yet because of local obstacles. (Actually, there are no local obstacles to upgrading exisiting CPMC facilities, just to the construction of a new hospital on Cathedral Hill.)
Sme public hospitals say they lack the money. “But in Francisco, we did the right thing. We passed a hospital bond,” Ammiano said. “When my colleagues from other areas say they can’t meet the deadline, I ask them — did you vote for a hospital bond?”
Ammiano plans to introduce legislation to pre-empt any further delays and get this process back on track. “It’s horrifying to see what happened to the hospitals in Japan,” he said. “We need to be prepared in California.”