Calif. Hospital, Damaged in Quake, Rallies as Patients Flow In

Aug. 24--At Queen of the Valley Medical Center, a Catholic nonprofit hospital founded in 1958, there was a sense of pride at the efficiency and commitment of everyone who sprang into action after a magnitude-6.0 earthquake rocked much of the San Francisco Bay Area early Sunday.

The Napa, Calif., hospital had suffered minor damage and had to rely on emergency generators for about three hours.

But hospital Chief Executive Walt Mickens said everyone -- including first responders shuttling the wounded in by ambulance, staff members who flooded into work, and engineers who got the facility fully up and running -- reacted "in an extraordinary fashion to a very significant event."

Security guards were keeping members of the media about 40 feet away from the facility and its parking lot, but as Mickens spoke at a briefing, triage tents erected behind the hospital were visible.

Mickens said about 120 people had come through the emergency room with earthquake-related injuries as of noon, "mostly bumps, bruises and cuts -- lots of lacerations."

He said the first wave of injuries came when residents got up and walked on glass or other debris. A second wave followed as people began the hard work of cleaning up.

Most patients were being treated and released, he said.

A child injured by a falling fireplace was the only patient transferred out -- to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, according to hospital officials. Two other patients who arrived during the initial wave had suffered heart attacks, he said. And three others were about to undergo orthopedic surgery, two for broken hips and one for a broken ankle.

He said they were "expected to do well. ... The hospital is functioning well. Our operating rooms are up and running."

Earlier Sunday, people came to check on loved ones at the hospital, and other patients were briefly treated and sent on their way.

Sherry Abblett was here for her grown daughter. At the time of the quake, the younger woman was asleep at home beside a floor-to-ceiling bedroom mirror, which fell on her. It was so heavy she could not get out from under it without help. Her foot soon turned black and blue.

"It turns out she had a fractured hip," Abblett told a bank of cameras gathered outside the hospital.

"I'm tired," she said when asked how she was doing. "Everything is out of our cupboards. Bookshelves have fallen across my office doorway. ... We're cleaning up."

Cassie Cornett stopped by the facility with badly rug-burned knees. She said neither she nor her mother had realized the shaking was an earthquake.

"We thought it was a bomb, " she said as her young son, Reef, stood nearby with his bicycle. "We thought it was the end."

Cornett said that as the quake continued, she "rolled off the bed, covered my head, got on my knees and yelled out" for Reef. Then she crawled to his room, leaving her knees raw.

"I was in mama mode," she said.

Reef was fast asleep.

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