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Chapter 10
Emergency Program Manager 1990 to 2000
I was again looking for a job in 1989, although I wasn't looking
too hard because I was now 72-years-old and thinking about
slowing down. Was I in for a surprise. The next ten years
turned out to be some of my busiest years.
It started out innocently enough with a small advertisement
in our local newspaper that I happened to read. "Wanted:
someone half-time for six months to fi nish writing an updated
earthquake plan for the City of Pacifi c Grove." We had lived in
Pacifi c Grove since 1982 when I began a job at Fort Ord, seven
miles away. I immediately fi led an application, pointing out
that I had worked for several years at a geophysical observatory
in charge of a seismograph for recording earthquakes. In fact,
I had been in a big magnitude 8.4 Richter scale earthquake
in Lima, Peru on May 24, 1940, when more than 200 people
were killed. I got the job, perhaps because I lived in Pacifi c
Grove while most of the other half dozen applicants lived
in North Carolina or Virginia or somewhere like that.
I was lucky that the Federal Emergency Management
Agency started a program at that time to help states and cities
develop emergency plans. I was coached by Sacramento to
write an application for the city of Pacifi c Grove to apply for
a grant which would pay half of my salary. The City Manager
was really interested in earthquake preparedness which was a
plus. The City's administrative services/fi nance director was
not, and he persuaded the City Manager to approve his scheme
of my only being allowed to work 19 hours a week, thus not
receiving any medical, retirement, etc benefi ts since I was less
than half-time. I didn't realize that this was immoral, but there
were a half dozen other employees in the same boat.
As it turned out, this 19-hours was good for me, as it
gave me time to do all sorts of volunteer things in disaster
management.