St. Paul's Hospital falling apart

A government report says the emergency and psychiatric wing at St. Paul's Hospital in downtown Vancouver, is physically falling apart.

According to the report, the 88-year-old building is leaking, pieces of the aging structure are falling off and it's too small to accommodate demands for emergency and psychiatric services.

Dr. Brian Warriner the interim CEO at St Paul's, says those concerns are just the beginning. He says the old brick building would collapse in a major earthquake.

"If there is an earthquake, that building would come down," he says. "That is a huge problem for us, and we've tried to make people in the ministry understand that."

Warriner says only minimal seismic upgrading has been carried out on the building and the hospital needs $49 million to fix the problems. He says St. Paul's is a priority with the health region.