Hospital Pays Tribute to Its Quake Heroes

They were bonded by tragedy. They survived uncertainty. And they brought forth life amid death and destruction.

On Saturday, four years to the day after the devastating Northridge earthquake struck Los Angeles County, St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica paid tribute to the heroes who banded together during the facility’s emergency evacuation after the powerful temblor. The 55-year-old hospital was one of the medical centers hit hardest by the quake, officials say, and the only one in the county to be completely evacuated.

“It was an incredibly frightening experience,” recalled Amy Barkan. As aftershocks rocked the aging building, Barkan lay in a makeshift maternity room in the basement, giving birth to her youngest son, Matthew Lasar.

“If it was my first child,” said the mother of two, “I would not have done it again.”

Matthew and two other “quake babies” born that day--Alexis Rose Reynolds and Bethany Proctor--were on hand to blow out the candles of their big vanilla cake. It read: “Happy Birthday, Shake, Rattle and Roll Babies.”

In all, about 200 people took part in the gala celebration--community volunteers, hospital staff, city workers, patients and their families, whose spirit and perseverance provided a bright light amid the most destructive earthquake in U.S. history.

The crowd was entertained by television celebrity Art Linkletter, a longtime hospital supporter. And they enjoyed a sumptuous lunch that included shrimp, sushi, croissant sandwiches and grilled asparagus, eggplant and peppers.

“Today is a remarkable moment,” Linkletter said. “The terrible things in the world are needed to bring out heroes.”

Although the quake’s devastation was most pronounced in the San Fernando Valley, Santa Monica was the Westside city that suffered the biggest monetary damage, about $117 million.

Within minutes of the early morning temblor, fires broke out citywide. Transformers exploded in the dark. Hundreds of gas lines leaked into the air.

St. John’s nurse Marilyn Anderson, who lives several blocks from the hospital, arrived to a frightening scene. The second floor of the north wing had buckled. The lights--and all electrically powered medical equipment--had been knocked out. Dazed patients were walking around with blankets over their shoulders.

“It was like a Mel Gibson movie,” recalled Anderson, who supervised emergency operations that day.

Despite the damage, only one person at the hospital, a worker, was injured. He suffered a slight head injury from a falling ceiling tile.

Inside a hospital room no bigger than a closet that morning was Kristin Reynolds, who was about to give birth to her daughter, Alexis Rose.

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For light, husband Bill Reynolds taped a flashlight to the wall. In the background, tiles fell from the ceiling and hospital orderlies changed nearby.

“It was not a terribly intimate scene,” the husband said. “It was like a MASH unit.”

Yet all went well. At 10:07 a.m., Alexis Rose was born.

Two days later, evacuation of the hospital’s 300 patients was completed. The health center reopened nearly nine months later after $32 million in repairs.

Even as hospital officials and their guests Saturday celebrated the chaotic events of four years ago, they looked forward to a new chapter in the history of St. John’s, which is owned by the Catholic Sisters of Charity.

Groundbreaking for a $270-million medical center is scheduled for May. The state-of-the-art facility, funded with federal and private money, will be built in stages on the 22-acre site where the hospital now sits.

“This is the end of this because we have to move on,” said St. John’s president, Sister Marie Madeleine Shonka. “We’re going to have an incredible new place.”