75 Displaced as State Closes Nursing Home : Health: Investigators ‘found clients in a grossly negligent state’ at Holiday Terrace, official says.

Seventy-five elderly men and women were forced to leave a nursing home Wednesday afternoon after the state Department of Social Services suspended the facility’s operating license, authorities said.

The Holiday Terrace residential facility at 7571 Wyoming St. was closed because the operators continually failed to comply with licensing requirements, state social services investigators allege.

Authorities said Holiday Terrace’s 75 residents were either taken in by family members or moved to other local facilities.

Kathleen Norris, a social services spokeswoman, said that investigators, during their latest tour of the 132-bed facility last Friday, “found clients in a grossly negligent state. They were lying in urine-soaked bedding . . . totally deplorable conditions.”

Investigators said that on inspection tours of Holiday Terrace since October, 1991, they found one instance in which there was no qualified administrator at the facility. Investigators noted storage problems with medication in November, 1990, said Norris.

In April, 1990, investigators found a client who was suffering from pneumonia and was extremely emaciated, Norris said. In September, 1991, a client had not received prescribed medicine, causing him to become aggravated and difficult to restrain. The staff then tied the client down with bed sheets, Norris said.

The operators of Holiday Terrace--Godofredo P. Nazareno, 54, and his wife, Elma S. Nazareno, 47--run six other facilities for the elderly or mentally ill in Westminster and Garden Grove, according to state records. When reached at his home in Huntington Beach late Wednesday night, Godofredo Nazareno declined comment, referring calls to his attorney.

A woman who answered the phone at Holiday Terrace said: “We will have a statement that will be issued by our attorney tomorrow.”

Gloria Salanga, 45, of Huntington Beach is also listed as a licensee with the Nazarenos for Holiday Terrace and for Faye Lodge, a Garden Grove facility for the mentally ill. Salanga was not available for comment Wednesday night.

The state, which is trying to revoke the operating licenses at all the Nazareno facilities, suspended the Holiday Terrace license Wednesday because the facility posed a risk to the clients’ health, Norris said.

“We’re an enforcement and maintenance operation,” Norris said of the state Department of Social Services. “When it becomes obvious that they are refusing or can’t or just don’t (improve conditions), then it’s our responsibility to get the operators out of the business of commercial care.”

Norris said the operators of Holiday Terrace have 15 days to respond to the charges and ask for a hearing before an administrative judge. If the Nazarenos and Salanga do not respond then, the state will automatically revoke the licenses at all seven facilities, she said.