Medical Center Dedicated; Replaces Loss in ’71 Quake

A rebuilt Olive View Medical Center was dedicated in Sylmar Saturday, the last major facility to recover from the Feb. 9, 1971, earthquake that destroyed the hospital.

The ceremony took place amid uncertainty over whether the county will have enough money to fully operate the new $120-million center.

But that did not dampen Saturday’s festivities, as nearly 1,200 people gathered on the same grounds occupied by the former hospital to celebrate the completion of the six-story glass building.

A beaming County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who has spent six years steering the project through stormy political waters, told a group of well-wishers: “It’s taken a lot of hard work, a lot of time. But the baby has been delivered.”

President Reagan sent greetings. He noted that his mother, Nelle Wilson Reagan, worked as a volunteer in the early days of Olive View when it was a tuberculosis hospital.

The new 350-bed hospital will replace Mid-Valley Hospital in Van Nuys, an aging 123-bed facility bought by the county for temporary use after the earthquake.

Among those present was Carolyn Wooley, a nurse who evacuated patients from the crumbled hospital the day of the quake. She will return as assistant nursing director of mental health at Olive View.

“When I walked through the new Olive View, I got a real eerie feeling. I wondered if I would be as calm if it happened again,” she said. “I’ve seen walls crumble and steel bend. I know that no building is 100% safe--not this one, not any one.”

The new structure is built with steel, sheer walls to withstand another quake.

Olive View’s rebuilding was delayed by a number of problems, including passage of the tax-cutting Proposition 13 in 1978.

The project gained an unlikely ally in Antonovich, a political conservative who shunned big expenditures of taxpayer money. But Antonovich said the hospital would provide a fairer share of county services to his Valley-area district.

There is enough money to open the hospital in late April and offer the same level of services currently provided at Mid-Valley. But Olive View Administrator Douglas Bagley said a projected $250-million deficit in the county budget for the next two years threatens to leave the 506,690-square-foot center operating at below capacity.