ANAHEIM : Hospital Neighbors Complain of Noise

Administrators at Anaheim General Hospital say the imaging machine they have placed in their parking lot will help save patients’ lives, but neighbors complain that the round-the-clock drone of the machine’s diesel generator is making their lives miserable.

Some residents of Oakhaven Drive say their sleep has been disrupted since the hospital two weeks ago began stationing a trailer holding a magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, machine in the parking lot about 75 feet from their homes. The trailer has been parked there for up to five days a week.

“We got noise 24 hours a day when it’s there,” said Harold Smith, 68, a retired engineer whose property is next to the hospital. “The nights that they take it away, what a relief. The last time they did that I opened my back window and slept the night away.”

Other neighbors interviewed had similar complaints. Smith said he has taken his case to the hospital, the city’s code enforcement office and council members and even unsuccessfully tried to convince the South Coast Air Quality Management District that the engine belches too much smoke. City officials said that they have checked his complaint and that Anaheim General is not in violation of the city’s noise ordinance.

Spokeswoman Brenda Beck said the hospital is trying to be a good neighbor. She said the staff has adjusted the generator to try to reduce its noise and has decreased to three the number of days each week on which the machine will be present.

“This machine is a great service to the community,” she said. “It is the most powerful MRI unit of its kind in the area.”

MRI machines use weak radio waves to scan the body’s organs, bones and tissues to find abnormalities that X-rays may miss. Many local hospitals are acquiring the machines and in some cases are housing them in trailers in their parking lots. An MRI scan can cost a patient more than $1,000.

Beck said the machine eventually will get power directly from the hospital and the generator--and its noise--will be eliminated. But the hospital must first receive state and city permits to do that work. “And that takes time,” she said.

Bruce Freeman, a supervisor in the city’s code enforcement division, said a sound test conducted from Smith’s back yard indicated that the generator emitted 58 decibels, just below Anaheim’s limit of 60 decibels. According to the World Almanac, 50 decibels is the equivalent of loud conversation and 60 decibels the equivalent of a noisy office.

“We went all around the parking lot with the generator running full bore, and the hospital was not in violation,” Freeman said. “It is my impression that the hospital is doing all it can to make the generator quieter.”

But not enough for some. Gene King, Smith’s next-door neighbor and the resident closest to the generator, said his 13-year-old son has begun placing blankets over his closed bedroom window to deflect some of the noise.

Freeman said Anaheim General’s MRI trailer is in violation of a city ordinance requiring businesses to perform their work inside their buildings unless they receive a city permit. He said that the hospital took out a permit application last week and that hearings on the application could be held at the Planning Commission and City Council meetings next month. In the meantime, the hospital will not have to remove the trailer, he said.

“It’s like if (a homeowner) builds a patio without pulling a permit,” Freeman said. “We don’t say, ‘tear down the patio,’ we say ‘get a permit.’ But if they don’t do so within about two weeks, then we’ll go back. What we don’t want is to become a police state.”