Tri-City earthquake bill clears state Assembly

OCEANSIDE —- Tri-City Medical Center’s efforts to extend the life of its oldest building received a significant boost Wednesday when the California Assembly approved a bill that would give the aging structure an extra seven years to reach earthquake safety compliance.

A team of Tri-City executives, led by interim chief executive officer Larry Anderson, made several trips to Sacramento in recent months to lobby for a bill that would exempt the public district hospital from a state law that requires all hospital buildings to be in compliance with new earthquake standards by 2013.

When it was first introduced by Assembly members Martin Garrick and Diane Harkey, the bill listed a series of potential exemptions that could get government-owned hospitals out of the deadline. But the version passed by the Assembly on Wednesday is much more narrowly tailored to hospital districts that have tried to pass bond measures and failed.

Tri-City previously stated, in three public bond campaigns, that its buildings would need to be repaired or replaced at a hefty cost in order to comply with the law.

The state classifies hospital buildings according to their probability of sustaining damage in an earthquake. Two of Tri-City’s oldest buildings were in the worst possible category, meaning that they must be replaced, or taken out of use, by 2013. However, the state has a new computer program that is more precise in determining a building’s true earthquake risk. If a building can be shown to have less risk of collapse, it can be reclassified into a less severe category with a mandate for replacement in 2030 instead.

However, in early 2009 the hospital convinced state regulators to reclassify one of its two remaining noncompliant buildings, and has now made significant progress on reclassifying the second, Tri-City’s central tower which opened in 1961.

The hospital is simultaneously working with regulators to get the building shifted into a category of less severe earthquake risk. A consultant hired by the hospital recently drilled concrete samples from the building and sent them to engineers for structural testing. That testing will determine the building’s true earthquake strength.

The current version of the bill also calls for the Legislature to wait and see if regulators grant Tri-City’s pending request for reclassification.

“This is a much more watered-down version, and I think it will get through the Senate just fine,” said Mike Zimmerman, Garrick’s chief of staff.

He noted that the current bill can be modified if regulators determine the hospital’s central tower really does need to be replaced.

“If that turns out to be the case, we can bring everybody back to the table and do an amendment,” Zimmerman said.

Larry Schallock, a hospital board member who traveled to Sacramento to lobby for the bill, said the legislation gives him comfort.

“This is our backup if the other part does not make it,” Schallock said. “We won’t be left stranded.”

Call staff writer Paul Sisson at 760-901-4087 or psisson@nctimes.com.