Hundreds of area residents, hospital employees and construction workers waved signs and listened to speeches outside the former Pascack Valley Hospital today to show their support for a plan to reopen a community hospital at the site.

ELIZABETH LARA / STAFF

The rally was the main event at a health fair that featured flu shots, safety information, and plenty of opportunities to sign petitions on the hospital’s behalf.

A community hospital in Westwood is “absolutely necessary,” said Dr. Elliott Lichtstein, “for my family and your family.” The Westwood cardiologist said he worried about elderly patients, who — without the hospital that served them for 53 years before it closed last year — have had to travel farther for hospital care.

Hackensack reopened Pascack’s emergency room two weeks ago for non-life-threatening cases. It has seen about 300 patients in the first 12 days, exceeding projections, its medical director said

It is seeking state permission to open a 128-bed, full-service hospital at the site. The for-profit Hackensack University Medical Center North at Pascack Valley will be a joint venture with Legacy Hospital Partners, Inc., of Texas, which is to provide $80 million.

Birkner and other local leaders had been upset when Pascack Valley closed last fall because they feared that the longer travel times to reach other hospitals on heavily trafficked roads would endanger residents.

Two other area hospitals — The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood and Englewood Hospital and Medical Center — oppose the plan. They say Bergen County doesn’t need another hospital and that reopening Pascack will weaken the others.

As the political and policy battle heats up, the Columbus Day rally organized by Hackensack was intended to demonstrate the public support for their plan. It featured free flu shots, food, information on topics from allergies to urology, and plenty of buttons and big signs that read “We Need Our Hospital” and “911 — We Want A Hospital Now.”

“Hopefully by January or February next year you’ll see a new hospital open up,” Ferguson told the crowd of about 400.

Chartered buses transported employees from Hackensack for the event. More than 150 union construction workers also came.

“We all live here in the area. Everybody has had Pascack Valley Hospital as part of their lives,” said Richard Dressel, business manager of Local 164 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and a member of the Hackensack University Medical Center Foundation’s board.

“We must be sure our voices are heard loud and clear in Trenton,” said Westwood Mayor John Birkner Jr., who was joined by council members, several county freeholders and mayors of other towns once served by the hospital. “We can’t stop with the Emergency Department. That’s only Step One.”

In the months since Pascack Valley closed in November, Lorraine Waldes, president of River Vale’s board of education, said she’d felt a “sense of uneasiness.”

Former volunteers at the hospital agreed. “If you were here and had a heart attack, you might not make it to Valley,” which is six miles away through heavily-trafficked roads in Ridgewood, said Alfred Baffa of Hillsdale.

Vivian Stubbs, a Westwood resident, worked the crowd with her clipboard, seeking signatures on a petition in favor of Hackensack. “I’ve gone door-to-door and church-to-church,” she said. “Diners, too.”

Each side in the public-relations battle has created its own online petition sites: BringingQualityCareHome.com for Hackensack, and KeepOurHospitalsHealthy.com for Valley and Englewood.

“I love Hackensack,” said Susan Quintilian, a Westwood resident and Hackensack employee. Her shift as a labor and delivery nurse had finished at midnight, and she was due at work at 3 p.m., but she said she would do anything she could to help.

J. Fletcher Creamer Jr., chairman of Hackensack’s board of governors, said he felt confident that the plan would be approved. It will both improve health care and create jobs, he said. “If the need wasn’t here, we wouldn’t do it.’’

E-mail: washburn@northjersey.com