MISSION HILLS : Condition of Hospital Is Near Normal

Every room in Holy Cross Medical Center is a recovery room.

Medical professionals who found themselves near the hub of last week’s earthquake now are finding time to embrace, cringe together during aftershocks, and talk. “How are you?” no longer is a conversation-filler.

“What we’ve found is people need to talk about it,” said Jane Cessar, spokeswoman for the Mission Hills hospital. “They don’t need tips and guides as much as people to talk to.”

Just four days after opening its doors again, Holy Cross already is surprisingly close to the tidiness and order typical of a medical center. Major portions are functioning, including obstetrics, critical care and non-trauma emergency care. This Tuesday, two babies were born in the newly repaired maternity ward.

“It’s amazing how they just do that,” joked Ann Moore, manager of maternal-child health at the center. Because the nursery was damaged, babies and mothers now recover together--an increasingly common approach at maternity wards, Moore said.

“We were kind of planning to do this anyway,” she said. “It just got started sooner. We actually were forced into doing it.”

The Jan. 17 earthquake forced many changes throughout Mission Hills, most of them far less positive. The community’s ranch-style homes on large lots show damage. A massive warehouse on Stranwood Avenue lost part of its wall, revealing a jumble of toppled pallets stacked with dry goods.

The Valley’s most famous adobe historic sites shared differing fates. The San Fernando Mission suffered little more than cracked plaster. After the Feb. 9, 1971, Sylmar quake, the historic site was retrofitted to withstand earthquakes better, said Msgr. Francis J. Weber, the mission’s director. “That’s probably what saved us,” he said.

Curators at the nearby Andres Pico adobe can’t say the same. An earthquake-stabilization project was still in the planning stages when the quake tore a hole in a wall, sheared off a chimney and toppled a courtyard wall. The building will remain closed for at least another year, according to curators of the house.