Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office would like to acknowledge our local volunteer, Kay Wyatt, awarded Oregon Emergency Management Association’s (OEMA) 2016 Emergency Management Volunteer of the Year Award. Kay is a long time Depoe Bay CERT volunteer and the current CERT Chapter Leader. In addition to Kay’s CERT activities, she is extremely dedicated to the sharing of her knowledge as a retired seismologist through her personal preparedness activities:
* Effective implementation of educational website for promotion of education and preparedness, http://wigglewatchers.org/
* Initiation and completion of a week- long earthquake camp for middle school girls to encourage preparedness and science concepts.
* Impetus and mentor for 7 neighborhoods to install neighborhood disaster supply caches

Excerpt from 2016 OEMA Nomination Form:
“Kay Wyatt is a dedicated, generous, intelligent volunteer with far reaching impacts. With the time she invests and the impact she makes, it is easy to think that she has a job as a full-time emergency management professional. In actuality, she is a full-time “volunteer” emergency management professional. We need more Kay Wyatts!”

The 2016 OEMA conference was held here in Lincoln County at the Salishan Spa and Resort, October 4 — 6th, 2016. Over 200 emergency management professionals, volunteers, elected officials and state representatives from across Oregon attended the conference.

Lincoln County partners and volunteers had a strong representation at this year’s conference:
* Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office Honor Guard, presentation of Colors
* Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians Tribal Vice-Chairman, Bud Lane, provided welcome blessing
* Lincoln County Sheriff Curtis Landers, welcomed attendees
* 3 Lincoln County volunteers (2 Sheriff’s Office/1 NLFR CERT) provided over 32 hours of volunteer time
* Lincoln County Auxiliary Communications Chief, Daron Wilson and Lincoln County Emergency Manager, Jenny Demaris both provided presentations
* Kerry deLisser-Shanks and Jenny Demaris, County Emergency Management were on the Conference Planning Team
* 8 individuals from Lincoln County public safety agencies attended the conference

One of the valued takeaways from this year’s conference was the presentation by Lt. General Russel L. Honoré (Ret.), Commander of Joint Task Force Katrina and Global Preparedness Authority. General Honore’ provided a motivating speech — Resilient Leadership: Prepare Today to Prevail Tomorrow, that gave insight to leadership needs before and after a catastrophic event such as Katrina or Cascadia.