A Strong Recovery : Health care: A $32-million earthquake repair project will allow St. John’s Hospital, minus its north wing, to reopen to inpatient services Oct. 3.

Nine months ago, the Northridge earthquake put an end to inpatient services at St. John’s Hospital and Health Center, leaving walls ripped apart and sending eerie, X-shaped cracks up and down the facility’s exterior.

Three hundred patients were evacuated. About 1,750 jobs were lost. And the Santa Monica hospital was plunged into self-examination: How to re-create the hospital in the face of the massive changes under way in the health-care industry.

The jury is still out on exactly how the St. John’s of the future will look. But the facility, long considered one of the leading hospitals in Los Angeles County, has largely recovered from its physical wounds. With $32 million in repairs completed, St. John’s will open in two weeks--minus its north wing--for inpatient services.

“There’s a high level of excitement and spirit in getting back to work and seeing patients here again,” said Bruce Lamoureux, chief operating officer for the hospital. “It is all at once overwhelming and very, very exciting. We have learned tremendous things.”

The opening is scheduled for Oct. 3 at 5 a.m. But the hospital plans to herald the event with a picnic and parade Saturday and a ribbon-cutting ceremony, with Gov. Pete Wilson in attendance, on Oct. 2.

What the temblor did in half a minute has taken hordes of laborers 256 days to mend. The hospital’s main and south wings, both badly damaged in the quake, were reinforced, from the foundation to the top floor, with 14-by-18-inch vertical steel columns and horizontal beams. The steel braces added roughly 2 1/2 feet of width to the buildings’ exterior.

The main wing’s foundation had to be excavated and replaced. The east and west wings of the hospital, only cosmetically damaged, have had their cracks filled and repainted. But the most severely damaged building, the north wing, has been demolished, leaving only a dirt lot with chalked concentric circles marking the spot of the former rose garden. The empty space, at least temporarily, will be used for modular buildings that will replace the north wing’s lost auditorium, which had been used for community education and conferences.

According to Terry Muldoon, St. John’s director of engineering and construction, the buildings are structurally stronger than they were before the earthquake because of the cross-directional steel frames.

But within five years, the buildings must begin retrofitting to comply with seismic hospital safety codes or be replaced, Muldoon said. State hospital building officials required medical buildings with more than 10% in lateral and vertical damages to fully comply with current state codes.

Recognizing that such upgrading would be overwhelming, officials allowed hospital administrators to develop a long-term plan to bring the facility into compliance with hospital building codes. In the interim, buildings were brought up to the codes that were in place the year that the structures were erected.

Thus, the main wing had to be repaired to meet at least the 1936 codes, and the south wing has been restored to at least 1968 codes, said Shell Culp, spokeswoman for the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. The east and west wings were built in 1974. The north wing was constructed in 1954.

A strategic planning committee is at work on a master plan for the long-term seismic improvements and is scheduled to release a report in January, Muldoon said. A cost estimate has not yet been made, he said.

As they promised, hospital administrators hired back many of their former employees. About 90% of the 1,000 positions-- have been filled by former St. John’s employees, with their seniority maintained and at the same rate of pay, according to Gary Miereanu, hospital spokesman.

Inpatient beds were reduced from 501 to about 260. Most of the 1,200 physicians who had privileges at the hospital have maintained them. Only the neonatal intensive care unit, which was housed in the hospital’s north wing, has not been replaced.

For the nurses and other employees returning to St. John’s, the past two weeks of orientation have been a little like a family reunion.

“Everybody is hugging everybody, and that first hour was really like seeing your family after a year,” said Mary Tomassini, a 34-year employee. “We really care about each other and we really care about the hospital. It’s so good to be home.”