Struck by citizens' response to last year's disasters, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took action Tuesday to make it easier for California to harness what he sees as the state's growing impulse to volunteer.

In signing an executive order creating a new Cabinet-level secretary's position over service and volunteering, Schwarzenegger said the idea is to encourage people to step up for the big stuff, such as the San Diego fires and the San Francisco Bay oil spill, or maybe just help neighbor kids do their homework.

"By elevating the state's volunteer profile, we will make it easier for people to go and get involved with this whole thing," Schwarzenegger told a raucous crowd at California State University, Northridge.

Schwarzenegger said he first started thinking about the Cabinet post as a serious idea in October, after watching volunteers at Qualcomm Stadium, in San Diego, during the fires. Some of them didn't know if their own homes had escaped the inferno, but they still handed out water and blankets and food.

"I'll never forget that sight," Schwarzenegger said.

The same scenario played out again in November, after a container ship sideswiped the Bay Bridge and blackened the water with thousands of gallons of oil. Regular folks pulled greasy ducks out of the ocean and worked to rake their beaches clean of the gathering black gobs.

"We've never experienced anything like this before," Schwarzenegger said, "this kind of enthusiasm to volunteer."

Schwarzenegger named the executive director of his already-existing volunteers agency, Karen Baker, as secretary over the new volunteer effort.

The position pays $175,000. Baker is refusing to take any more than her current salary of $130,332.

Baker told the Northridge crowd that more than 6 million Californians already are acting on their volunteer impulse.

"But we need millions more," she said. "Am I right?"

She said in a conference call later that her new job will mostly consist of acting as a "control tower," directing the millions to the places they're needed most.