On January 17 th , 1994 before the sun even rose, the peace of a Los Angeles morning was broken when the ground began to quake. The 6.6 magnitude quake would soon become known as the Northridge Earthquake. When the dust settled, 57 people were dead and tens of billions of dollars in damage occurred. Among the most important buildings crippled were 11 hospitals that were either damaged or rendered inoperable because of the quake. That earthquake spurred the legislature to act and require every acute care hospital, regardless of their seismic risk, to be able to withstand a major earthquake. The deadline to meet the state law is 2030, which is not that far away when construction can take years. Now more than two decades after the passage of the law, many hospitals in Central California are still struggling to raise the money necessary to do expensive expansions or retrofits. Many of the biggest hospitals in the area, Mercy Hospital in Bakersfield and Community Regional and St. Agnes in
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