Diablo Canyon & SLO Veterans Museum Partner To Restore Army Tank Display
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (KEYT) – A group of Diablo Canyon employees banded together to restore a military tank outside the Central Coast Veterans Memorial Museum in San Luis Obispo.
The volunteer effort saved the museum about $20,000.
A Diablo Canyon security supervisor who also serves as a National Guard tank commander spearheaded the volunteer effort.
“I’m one of the leaders of the veterans department at Diablo Canyon Power Plant within PG&E,” says Cody Smith, Diablo Canyon Power Plant security supervisor. “I met with the museum director, he gave me a list of projects And then as soon as I saw that the tank restoration was on that with my background in tanks, that was immediately top of my list.”
It included pressure washing and prepping, masking and priming, and applying the final coat.
“It’s very inspiring to watch it evolve from its previous state to its current state,” says Bryan Galvan, Diablo Canyon Power Plant risk manager.
The piece of equipment, an M60 battle tank model M60A3, weighs 53 tons and measures 22 feet long, 12 feet wide and 11 feet high.
“This tank is the generation before the Abrams tank,” says Smith. “So it’s the Vietnam era. And then the Abrams tank came out in the Gulf War. And I served on the third generation of that platform.”
Many of the Diablo Canyon employees who participated are military veterans.
“We had a volunteer group that contacted us that said they were interested in helping us here at the museum,” says Paul Provence, a volunteer at the Central Coast Veterans’ Museum. “The tank came up as a great project for them.”
Volunteers utilized two pressure washers connected to 350ft of hose. Five gallons of primer, six gallons of topcoat, 300ft² of aluminum foil and paper for masking and hand-cut stencils.
“I think it’s important to keep monuments alive and in whatever capacity or history they serve,” says Smith.
The volunteer work allowed the museum to avoid spending money on a contractor.
“PG&E, they have a formula where they identify volunteers and then the number of hours that the volunteers participate,” says Provence. “There’s some type of an equation. And we were able to get an additional $750 donation from PG&E.”
The tank was in military service from 1960 to 1991 and has been installed outside the museum since 2006.
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