When Disaster Strikes, FEMA Teams Mobilize : Assistance: Many workers for the federal agency are catastrophe victims themselves. They’re putting in nine-hour days, six days a week--and liking it.

After Hurricane Hugo in 1989 severely damaged the boat on which she and her husband were living off the coast of Charleston, S.C., Ceil Olson dreaded having to deal with government officials for assistance.

“I probably felt like most people do about government employees: that they didn’t do anything but collect a paycheck,” Olson said. “But I never saw a more dedicated, harder-working group of people in my entire life, and I wanted to be part of that team.”

She did become part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency team, and now, as a reservist, has dropped everything at her home in Austin, Tex., to join FEMA teams that have dealt with Hurricane Andrew in South Florida, the floods in the Midwest and, now, the Northridge earthquake.

“This is the most satisfying thing I have ever done,” said Olson, a former legal secretary and office manager.

Although FEMA maintains a reserve force of trained experts in various fields to respond to disasters, with each new catastrophe the federal agency also hires hundreds of temporary employees to help man disaster application facilities. For the Northridge quake, more than 1,500 local people were hired for temporary work.

Like Olson, most of the local hires have also experienced disaster--in this case, the Northridge quake--and so are likely to be more sympathetic to other victims seeking assistance.

“I had a woman . . . berate me up one side and down the other about how I did not understand, that I don’t have a clue what’s going on,” Olson said. “I said, ‘No ma’am, I do understand. I’ve been a disaster victim. My daughter lost her home in Hurricane Andrew in Homestead, Fla. I know about that . . . and I’m 1,500 miles away from home.’ She calmed down after that.”

In the first days after the Jan. 17 quake, FEMA employees were expected to work 14-hour days, seven days a week. Now, they work nine-hour days, six days a week.

At least five such employees at the Earthquake Service Center in Sherman Oaks don’t seem to mind the long hours.

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Sylvia Thibodeaux, 48, suffered only minor damage to her Sherman Oaks home of 19 years: damage to the chimney and a few cracks. But some rental properties she and her husband own suffered more extensive damage, so when a Disaster Application Center in Sherman Oaks opened, she went to apply for a Small Business Administration loan.

She saw long lines and harried workers and felt the tension in the air.

“It was so busy that I thought they needed help,” said Thibodeaux, who in 1987 retired after 25 years as an administrator for Pacific Bell. “So I stopped by the FEMA employment office in Pasadena. I went in at noon and I was sworn in by 2 p.m.”

Thibodeaux is now a supervisor. The long work hours have not affected her. “Strangely enough it hasn’t bothered me yet,” she said. “Maybe it’s my approach in that I know I don’t have to be here working, I want to be here.”

In addition to helping victims fill out applications, Thibodeaux has ended up doing a lot of counseling.

“Sometimes you have to talk to some people a little longer than others,” she said. “There is a lot of satisfaction in this job. It makes you feel good.”

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Gennadiy (Henry) May, 42, of Tarzana, is originally from Minsk, Belarus, in the former Soviet Union. In 1988 he was working with a construction crew building an underground metro line in northwestern Armenia when a 6.8-magnitude earthquake hit.

“We were 200 feet underground and we did not feel a thing,” May said. “But when we came to the surface a few hours later, we saw all the destruction. We began helping dig people out of the rubble.”

May’s experience in Armenia helped him deal with the Northridge earthquake, but he was motivated to help quake victims here to pay off a personal debt.

“I am very grateful to this country for what it did for myself and my family by accepting us as political refugees,” he said. He has been in the United States just over two years. “It was an opportunity to pay back a moral debt.”

May, who speaks German and Russian, began as a volunteer interpreter. He was hired about a week later after discovering that he had lost his job as a cashier at a liquor store that had been severely damaged by the quake.

“Just speaking to people in their own language makes it easier for them,” he said. “I am doing what I want to do, what I can do. I want to help people. This is the reason I spend more time with my colleagues here than my family. But they understand.”

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Mabel Portillo, 37, of Canoga Park ran her own importing and marketing company. But the combination of the recession and the Jan. 17 quake led her to shut it down. Portillo, who lived in Monterey Park in 1987 when the Whittier Narrows quake hit, suffered damage to her condominium. Most of her neighbors moved out, but Portillo, despite being without water, electricity or gas, decided to stay.

With time on her hands, Portillo--who speaks French, Spanish and some Portuguese--volunteered to translate for some of her neighbors who needed assistance at the FEMA centers.

After making a few trips to the center, a FEMA employer asked her what she was doing. After explaining the situation, she was offered a job.

“I started the next morning at 8 a.m.,” said Portillo, who started as an interpreter, then worked registering people and now is a supervisor.

Portillo said she enjoys work more now.

“I’ve always had a job where I had to convince people that they wanted something I was selling,” she said. “Here, I’m giving people something they already want and need. It’s really nice.

“People have said to me, ‘I can’t believe how nice you are.’ But I just enjoy it,” she said.

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Armineh N. Shabazian of Sherman Oaks is of Armenian descent, but grew up in Iran. She and her parents fled Iran during the revolution. When an earthquake hit Armenia in 1988, many members of her family were killed. Her father became very depressed and died six months later.

“His death affected me a lot,” she said.

So when the Northridge quake hit, Shabazian saw an opportunity to honor the memory of her father and help others as well. Fluent in Farsi, Armenian and Russian, she volunteered to interpret.

“In the memory of my father, I wanted to help,” said Shabazian, who never before worked outside her home. “I told my husband I’d be out only for a few hours, but I ended up staying the whole day.”

Shabazian said she has stayed close to some of those she has helped. The Northridge quake has been a painful reminder of the past for many Persians who lost everything during the Iranian revolution and Armenians who lost property and loved ones in the 1988 earthquake.

“I do so much counseling I think I should go into counseling,” she said jokingly. “I enjoy meeting people and I get emotional with them, even though I probably shouldn’t.

“But I think my father would be proud.”

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Steve Miller, 29, lost his apartment in Sherman Oaks and his job at Bullock’s in Northridge Fashion Center as a result of the Jan. 17 earthquake.

In the days following the 6.8-magnitude quake, he slept on the grass at Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks Recreation Center. When a Disaster Application Center was set up at the park, Miller got in line with hundreds of others expecting to deal with uncaring government bureaucrats.

While waiting to apply for unemployment benefits, he instead got a job offer to help other quake victims apply for unemployment.

“If FEMA wasn’t around, I don’t know what would have happened to me,” Miller said.

Miller said he has seen some of his former colleagues from Bullock’s and others from his old neighborhood in line at the FEMA centers. Sharing stories about the disaster with the applicants has been mutually beneficial.

“Each time I talked about it, it was more and more therapy for me,” Miller said. “I could really understand what they are going through. I would tell them my story and it would give a little more feeling to the EDD (state Employment Development Department).”

Miller, who recently moved into a new apartment in North Hollywood, lost about half of everything he owned when his apartment collapsed. He and his girlfriend also broke up when she decided she had enough of earthquakes and moved back to New York.

But Miller remains upbeat.

“I am grateful for my life,” he said. “I tell people, ‘It’s going to be OK. You’ve made it this far.’ ”