Pence: Infants’ earthquake savior
By Caroline Delijani
It was a shivering-cold January morning. I was standing in front of Santa Monica Hospital — which is now the Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center — in absolute awe as I stared at the huge crack that ran down the five-story building. Water was pouring down from the top floor, and it sounded much like the Bride’s Veil in Yosemite. No. This was not a bizarre nightmare.
The Northridge Earthquake had zigzagged throughout most of the westside at 4:17 a.m. on Jan. 17, 1994.
Santa Monica — on that early morning — was a mess of fallen bricks and shattered glass, quiet streets with barely hanging store signs, and piles of hangers and clothes were covering Wilshire Boulevard. My tears gushed uncontrollably, and I didn’t know if I would ever see my twin baby boys again. Only 10 days old and premature, Kevin and Ryan stayed at the hospital for proper supervision and care, according to doctor’s orders.
A nurse named Cindy was rushing to the hospital to volunteer her services. She remembered me and said she had seen my babies. She said that Wanda had saved them, and I could find them in the auditorium where all the patients were being transferred. Like a tidal wave, the crowd of the injured — pieces of cloth wrapped around their arms, faces bleeding, limping as best they could — carried her away in a moment.
I rushed to the auditorium and saw what resembled the movie portrayal of a war zone. The earthquake, at 6.7 on the Richter scale, had hit hard but also continually shook us every half-hour during the aftermath. Everyone in the auditorium screamed, embraced and prayed.
Old people were being carried in on sheets to recline on the bare floor side by side; a woman was pacing up and down, screaming — about to go in labor. Another woman, almost unconscious, had just been C-sectioned. Nurses ran as doctors frantically paced every which way — checking on patients, making calls on hopeless landline phones. (Cell phones would have been handy, but back then, at best, you would have a pager.) Some even thought of bringing a camera to work to take photos of what they were witnessing.
President Bill Clinton had announced a state of emergency.
My heart was pounding, and I didn’t know where to look for two, tiny bundles that hardly weighed four pounds each. I found another mom. One of her triplets had stayed at the natal intensive care ward. She showed me where I could find Wanda. By then, everyone knew about “Wanda and the twins.” In a quiet corner, Wanda held a clear, plastic hospital bassinet — which sheltered both my babies, side by side. She had covered them with many layers of blankets and whatever else she could find.
The babies were fast asleep, safe and sound, in the arms of their guardian angel. I held Wanda in my arms and cried for a few minutes before I could find the words to thank her. I wiped my tears with my bare hands and asked her to tell me exactly what happened.
Wanda Pence, at an age when most people have retired, has served as a nurse in the labor and delivery and nursery departments of the hospital for almost six decades. She had actually kept count of the number of babies she had taken care of since 1975. They totaled 15,000. She said that because she didn’t have children, she treated every newborn as her own. Twenty minutes before the quake, Wanda was doing a routine check on the babies in the nursery. When she took Ryan’s temperature, she noticed it had dropped slightly. She explained that happens often with premature babies whose systems simply “forget” to warm up their bodies.
According to hospital procedure, she placed Ryan in an isolette — a large green machine with a warm chamber. The colossal machine covered most of the wall in the nursery. Before she closed the door of the isolette, she looked at Kevin, sleeping all alone and thought that because they were twins and had lived all their lives together in their mother’s tummy, there was no reason to separate them.
Wanda slipped Kevin in the chamber along with his brother, unaware that her decision would save lives. She said she didn’t really know why she thought of such an idea, especially given that hospital rules stated that two babies shouldn’t stay in the isolette at the same time for health and hygiene reasons.
Shortly after, Wanda finished her rounds and took the remaining three babies in the nursery to their mothers to be fed. Wanda said she was teaching a new mom how to breast feed when a great jolt, “like a massive truck hitting the building,” rocked everyone and all electricity was lost.
The noise — metal beams ripping through ceilings, patients screaming, debris falling in all directions — was endless. But Wanda, calm and strong, unlike her fragile appearance, made sure the three mothers had their newborn babies and husbands near and said to them, “You can walk yourselves down to safety. Your husbands will help. I need to find the Delijani twins. They don’t have their parents with them.”
Then she hurried back to the nursery only to find a huge pile of bassinets blocking the entrance. Minutes earlier, five babies were sleeping in those bassinets. She made her way in the pitch dark to the back door of the nursery. She felt water all over her feet and smelled heavy fumes of gas. The pipes had burst, and one of the nurses had collapsed on the floor.
Wanda knew exactly where to look for the babies. The only object intact in the entire nursery was the isolette. She took the babies out, filled her shirt with as many tiny bottles and diapers as she could get her hands on and rushed down the stairs. When she made it downstairs, she asked some people to go back upstairs and bring down her colleague from the nursery.
I trembled as I listened to her. I noticed she was uncomfortable and rubbing her ankle. I asked her about it. She lifted up her pant cuff to reveal a huge bruise on her swollen ankle. She said she twisted her ankle as she rushed down the stairs with the babies in her arms. Later, I found out her ankle was broken.
Wanda ended the story by saying when she reached the ground floor, she looked around and thought about what to do next. It was cold outside, and the sun was barely out. She went to her car, set the babies on the passenger seat, turned on the heat and started to feed them one by one.
They stayed in the car for a while before the authorities could decide if the auditorium was safe enough to temporarily house hospital patients.
I share this story with whomever I meet. I tell everyone there is hope in desperate times. A miracle worker like Wanda could show up and change your life forever.
Wanda, you remain in all my prayers. Thank God for you.
Wanda Pence continues caring for newborns part time at the Santa Monica- UCLA Medical Center. Kevin and Ryan turned 10 years old on Jan. 7.
They are in the fourth grade at Sinai Akiba Academy, where they are learning the importance of community help and good citizenship. They recently raised more than $1,600 for the Hadassah Hospital Children’s Pavilion.
When receiving Kevin and Ryan’s little sister, Shannon, in the same nursery in March of 1996, Wanda looked at me and said, “You again?”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 17, 2004. Read the original PDF.