FIRE DAMAGE SLOWS EMERGENCY ROOM OPENING
PARADISE » State Assemblyman James Gallagher and state Sen. Jim Nielsen stood in front of the Feather River Hospital’s emergency door Oct. 17, 2019, and announced that the state would allow Adventist Health to open a standalone emergency room.
Lurking behind the optimism of that day was the damage done inside the hospital by the Camp Fire on Nov. 8, 2018.
Adventist Health President Chris Champlain and Feather River spokesperson Maureen Wisener took this newspaper on a tour Friday inside the hospital that included a look at the hospital’s power plant destroyed by the fire.
Champlain said the tour was intended to get the word out to the community as to where Adventist Health is in the process getting the emergency room open in Paradise — but work remains.
“People drive by and say, ‘Man, that looks really nice; what’s going on? Why hasn’t Adventist Health opened that yet?” he said. “You walk inside, and you have an entirely different story.”
Wisener added that even in areas where the drywall remains, it’s unknown what’s going on behind that wall and what needs to be remediated.
Not only is Adventist Health looking at opening California’s first standalone emergency room, but it also has to do it following an unprecedented fire. That is a challenge that both the company and state regulators will work together on.
While the exterior of the building looks pretty consistent with what it’s always looked like, inside the hospital are areas where all of the drywall has been removed, and all that stands is wood. Wisener said the damage ranged from dry
mold, smoke damage and asbestos.
Champlain noted that all of the air conditioning and heating ducts have to be cleaned, which may not be enough.
Champlain said the Office of Statewide Hospital Planning and Development might even make the hospital take it out after it’s been cleaned because it still might not meet the standard.
He also added all of the electrical wirings would have to be redone. The question that Adventist Health is trying to answer is whether it is cheaper to rebuild it from scratch or renovate the hospital within its current structure.
Champlain said the company has to decide whether or not to open at the current site or another site within Paradise. It’s unclear if the legislation states that a standalone emergency room on ridge has to be at the Pentz Road site or somewhere else within Paradise.
He said that if the health company were to build an off-site standalone emergency room, it could be ready within four years — and that’s under the most optimistic process.
He said it’s going to take at least two years to go through the process to decide whether or not to build where the former hospital is now or elsewhere.
He also added that one of the things that hospitals do in situations like the one Feather River Hospital finds itself in is to evaluate the real estate. This could mean that instead of building a hospital with the most stringent building standards in the state, the other option would be to convert the building to a non-medical use.
“That’s a completely different building standard,” he said.
Instead of meeting the Office of Statewide Hospital Planning and Development standards, “which is the most stringent building standards in all of the state of California,” he said, health care administrators would have to decide what’s the best use of the property, the needs of the community, the population base of the community, and where it is going.
Two and a half years after getting the OK to build a standalone emergency room in Paradise, Champlain says the hospital is now learning what that means.