LOS ALAMITOS : Mobile Unit for Disasters May Get Ax

From a distance, the group of large beige tents looks almost like a carnival has been set up on the airfield at the Armed Forces Reserve Center.

But there are no fun and games here. Inside the canvas and vinyl structures is a serious, full-service, mobile hospital stocked with state-of-the-art medical equipment, including portable X-ray and cell-saver machines, to treat at least 400 patients.

One weekend a month, volunteers such as Anne Walters, a nurse at Los Alamitos Medical Center, don fatigues and come from all over Southern California to operate the Army National Guard’s 143rd Evacuation Hospital. In addition to providing military personnel with some limited medical care, the nurses and doctors train on the equipment and run drills so they’ll be ready to treat hundreds of patients, both military and civilian, in case of war, or if an earthquake or flood devastates the area.

But all the impressive equipment and hours of training may get caught in the federal budget crunch. The hospital may close in 1994 under a federal military cutback proposal that would reduce the California Army National Guard by 46%. About 12,000 National Guard and reserve soldiers would be cut along with the two medical units in the state--the 143rd Evacuation Hospital in Southern California and the 146th Combat Support Hospital in San Francisco.

Supporters say the axing of the hospitals is unwise since the mobile evacuation hospital is the only medical facility capable of serving patients from all over the state if other hospitals are affected by a disaster.

The fully equipped facility, which can be packed up and transported anywhere, was used during the Los Angeles riots in May and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in the Bay Area. It was also put on alert a week ago when twin earthquakes rocked Southern California.

“Forget that I’m a nurse; as a citizen, I’m really nervous,” said Walters, a mother of three who lives in Los Alamitos. “What if an earthquake devastates Los Alamitos Medical Center?”

Walters and others are lobbying legislators to save the facility. So far, they have persuaded one state senator, Ralph Dills (D-Gardena), to introduce a resolution urging federal officials to keep the hospital intact.

Supporters argue that the National Guard accounts for less than 5% of the entire Department of Defense budget, so the federal government would see only minimal savings by cutting from that force. Elimination of the evacuation hospital could also raise military costs because personnel are able to get some basic services there, such as physicals and vaccinations, which they otherwise would have to get from more expensive private doctors and clinics, said Maj. Andrew Marcantonio Jr., the hospital’s supervisor.

The Southern California medical unit has been in Los Alamitos since 1968. But in 1990, Marcantonio and his staff decided to take the $1.5 million worth of equipment and supplies out of storage sheds and set the hospital up on a permanent basis near the runways--convenient for flying patients in and for loading equipment and supplies quickly onto planes for transport.

Nine full-time military personnel and 400 National Guard weekend soldiers-- most of them practicing doctors and nurses--staff the facility.

“If we were to go away, California will never get us back,” said Capt. Kelly Galvin, a medical recruiting officer. “Once they realize, ‘Oh, shoot--we shouldn’t have done that’ and try to correct it, they’ll say: ‘It’s too expensive.’ ”