Alice Busch was awarded the Sustainability Award. This award is designed to recognize employee and team efforts to make Multnomah County’s vision of attaining an equitable, livable, resilient, and low-carbon place to live and work possible. Alice's work on the Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub Seismic Risk Analysis was highlighted as a primary reason for her earning the award.

Kirsten "Kupp" Kuppenbender was given the Superior Public Service Award - Internal. This award is to promote and recognize individual employees for outstanding customer and public service. The Internal customer category is for when a county employee or team provides a service to other county employees. Kupp was recognized for work around the County's severe weather sheltering operations.

Over the last month, team members Lydia Ledgerwood-Eberlein and Alice Busch have distributed 20 misting stations to community based organizations in a joint effort by MCEM's Logistics and Operations divisions. Organizations that received misting stations include Conquer from Within, the Rosewood Initiative, and Home Forward.

The misting stations are part of a project to ensure community based organizations have the necessary supplies to serve their communities during severe hot weather. Many of the locations these stations will operate in will appear on an interactive map during severe hot weather, found on Multnomah County's Help for When It's Hot page.

Over the course of these newsletters, you learn a lot about what the Multnomah County Emergency Management team members are working on to support our communities during their work hours. Look a little deeper and you will find that many Emergency Management staff are also engaged in emergency response related volunteer work as well, spending their free time in support of organizations like Team Rubicon, Habitat for Humanity and Red Cross. Others on the MCEM team volunteer at organizations that are disaster adjacent like Solve, Adopt One Block, Zenger Farms and many others. 

Several team members are also active in the Portland Neighborhood Emergency Team (NET). Nationally, this program is called Community Emergency Response Team (CERT). The NET program promotes neighborhood engagement and Multnomah County Emergency Management has been partnering with Portland Bureau of Emergency Management for over 10 years to provide many of the trainings that help NET members prepare to respond to all types of disasters, including the Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquake. NET members do city-wide drills (skills practice), help during severe weather response operations, conduct outreach events across the city and help their immediate neighbors be more disaster response ready. Multnomah County Emergency Management also helps support other communities across the county with their efforts to provide this type of program.

On Saturday, June 1, NET celebrated 30 years of service with a breakfast and program celebrating the many accomplishments of the members and the whole organization. The first speaker of the day was our own Alice Busch who has been part of NET as long as there has been a program! Alice spoke from her heart about how grateful she is to be part of such a dynamic and successful program. She gave much of her allotted time to celebrate the amazing accomplishments of the program (for example, training on wilderness first aid, psychological first aid and working with animals in disaster courses), the Basic Earthquake Emergency Communications Node (BEECN) and solicited even more successful projects from the attendees. Several people from Portland Public Schools were honored for their NET Teen program that MCEM also supports. 

We have gratitude for those who contribute their free time to their communities locally, nationally and globally. Thank you to everyone who commits so much time and energy giving back!

When the weather gets dangerously hot, Multnomah County may open up Disaster Resource Centers (DRCs) or Emergency Cooling Shelters to keep people safe. We depend on community-wide support to help activate, run and staff them.

Learn more about how you help the County show up for our community by:

Attending a virtual info session Tuesday, June 11, at 1 p.m. (no RSVP needed; add it to your Google calendar).

Attending a 2-hour DRC staff training right after at 2 p.m. (RSVP here).

Watching a video about staffing shelters or helping with Logistics.

Tuesday, June 11, 1-1:45 p.m.

Google Meet link (no RSVP necessary)

Tuesday, June 11, 2:00-4:00 p.m.

Fill out the DRC Staff Interest Form to RSVP

You can also help our communities by sharing the County’s Help for When it’s Hot website.

Questions? Contact ESF6.MassCare@multco.us.

You can view upcoming training opportunities through the following events calendars: Multnomah County, the Regional Disaster Preparedness Organization (subscribe option), the State of Oregon (subscribe option), and the State of Washington.

June 13: The Safety and Security Impacts of Houselessness on Businesses and Organization

June 17-21: O0305: Type 3 All-Hazards Incident Management Team

June 18, 25-26: When Minutes Matter: All-Hazards Alert & Warning Technical Assistance Workshop

July 11: Emotional First Aid Training Seminar

July 23-25: MGT456 Integration of Cybersecurity Personnel into the EOC for Cyber Incidents

July 25-26: Disaster Management for Public Services