Demolition of 16 County-USC Buildings Sought : Quake: Today supervisors are expected to approve tearing down hospital facilities. Meanwhile, officials hope to use FEMA aid to speed construction of $1-billion complex planned before temblor.

The Board of Supervisors is expected to approve today the demolition of 16 quake-damaged Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center buildings, leaving unresolved several key issues related to how the vast center will recover from more than $400 million in facilities losses.

At the same time, county health officials are hoping to persuade the Federal Emergency Management Agency to allow them to use federal relief money to speed the construction of a $1-billion complex to replace the quake-battered center.

The buildings to be torn down housed administrative and service functions and were not used for patient care. But two others, the Pediatric Pavilion and the Psychiatric Hospital, both of which were closed and their patients transferred after the Jan. 17 quake, were extensively damaged.

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The condition of those buildings is still being assessed, but officials said it is likely that the Pediatric Pavilion will have to be torn down.

Before the earthquake, county officials were nearing completion of plans to replace the entire medical center, which occupies 100 buildings and 4 million square feet. Rather than spending as much as several hundred million dollars repairing and retrofitting the center’s buildings, county officials hope to use the relief money for the new complex--adjacent to its location in Boyle Heights--that would include intensive care rooms, burn wards, laboratories and outpatient clinics.

“FEMA has not agreed to this, but this is what we are hoping for,” project manager Fernando Vizcarra said. FEMA officials could not be reached for comment.

Although medical center officials said financing for the project is in place, FEMA money could speed its planning and construction. The center, which will be nearly half a million square feet larger than the First Interstate tower in Downtown Los Angeles, was to have been built in several phases over eight years, but FEMA money could make it possible to build it all at once. Under the current timetable the first of two main wings is to be occupied in 1997, but that date could be moved up two years with help from FEMA, officials said.

Although the FEMA money could accelerate the hospital replacement plans, there is resistance from private hospital officials in the county who believe that alternatives to the $1-billion medical center should continue to be explored. Their argument is that with a glut of empty hospital beds in the central Los Angeles area, the massive hospital envisioned by the county make not make sense.

Anthony J. Abate, a vice president with the Hospital Council of Southern California, said: “We find ourselves with excess capacity that wasn’t considered five or 10 years ago when planning for this hospital began,” he said. “In Los Angeles County, 50% of the hospital capacity is empty right now.”

The future of other county-operated community clinics and regional health centers still has not been decided. These include the Mid-Valley Comprehensive Health Center in Van Nuys, nine office and other buildings at the Olive View Medical Center in Sylmar, and the San Fernando Health Center. The county staffs 45 regional health centers and about half were seriously damaged in the quake.

County-USC spokesman Harvey Kern said an initial estimate pegged damage to center facilities at $390 million but that a final damage estimate could take four more months to compile.

The buildings to be demolished include a 61,000-square-foot research and office facility built in 1921 and a 40,000-square-foot laundry built in 1928. Since the quake, the medical center has been sending out more than 1 million pounds of laundry a month. FEMA and the state Office of Emergency Services have agreed to pay $750,000 to demolish the structures.

Some of the vacant land created by the demolitions will be occupied by temporary buildings to be used as offices by doctors and nurses. Kern said that since the quake, many doctors who worked at the pediatric and psychiatric facilities have been using their cars as makeshift office space.

The Pediatric Pavilion was evacuated Feb. 1 and patients were moved into Women’s Hospital. That set up a domino-like series of moves in which some administrative functions were moved from a medical center office building to the City of Commerce, to be replaced by clinics formerly at Women’s and at Pediatric.

Recognizing the new arrangement, the Board of Supervisors Tuesday will vote on changing the name of Women’s Hospital to Women’s and Children’s Hospital.

When the psychiatric facility was shut down, about 80 adult patients were moved to Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk. Juvenile patients were transferred to Augustus Hawkins Mental Health Center at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center.