All hazards planning: What to do when the earth shakes and water fails

Located in the Mojave Desert, Ridgecrest Regional Hospital in Ridgecrest, California, is a critical access hospital that is closer to Las Vegas than it is a major earthquake fault line. Still, there have been minor temblors, so an earthquake had been on their list of potential emergency events.

But it wasn’t high on the list—until July 4, 2019.

The healthcare complex is near a military installation and sits between the Death Valley and Sequoia national parks. Built in 2010, the main hospital has only 25 licensed hospital beds but is attached to a 26-bed distinct part transitional care unit/skilled nursing facility (SNF) and shares a campus with a 99-bed SNF, said Stephanie Meeks, MBA, HACP, the hospital’s emergency management and regulatory compliance manager, during a presentation at the DNV Healthcare annual symposium in November.

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