Nikole Babb
nbabb@cherryroad.com
Two Volunteer of the Year awards given out
Last Tuesday evening, Butler County Emergency Management Agency celebrated the groups of people who volunteer for the Community Emergency Response, (CERT), and Butler County Animal Response Teams, (BUCART), with an annual dinner. The dinner highlighted and revisited the activities and hard work the volunteers put fourth throughout the year.
The theme of the dinner was Bridging the Gap as Keri Korthals, Director of Butler County Emergency Management, (EMA), talked about the ways in which volunteers bridge the gap in many ways, but fully for Butler County EMA.
Korthals explained the gap as the space between what we have to work with and what needs to be done. What’s needed in between those pillars is where volunteers come in. In 2023, CERT and BUCART volunteers dedicated 2,821 volunteer hours across 36 people. In 2024, the volunteers dedicated 3,667 volunteer hours across 41 people.
According to the math on the average volunteer value scale, CERT/BUCART volunteers were worth $113,200 in relevance to the hours they volunteered. Per hour they are worth about $30.87.
CERT and BUCART volunteers are trained to respond when disaster strikes. They’re trained and skilled in many disaster response techniques such as First Aid/CPR certified, light search and rescue, animal response and more.
Over the years they’ve done flood damage assessment (2019), assisted the Butler County Sheriff’s Office in searching for an adult (2019), and searching for cold case evidence (2021), helped with securing and cleaning up the tornado efforts in Andover (2022), and two Draft Horse rescues (2023 and 2024). Between the disaster rescues and jobs, the volunteers work each month to hone in and sharpen their skills. This can include organizing county-wide disaster exercises, shelter training, survivor mental health training, radio training, animal shelter training and more.
At the end of the dinner, certificates of volunteer hours were given out alongside annual awards. Volunteer of the Year Award is usually given to one volunteer, but this year, two were chosen. The first announced was Mike Geiman, 12 year long volunteer who is on the leadership team and shines through his skills to focus on safety for the entire group. The second person recognized as Volunteer of the Year was Cliff Jones, who is a six year dual member of CERT/BUCART. He also focuses largely on safety and always says yes when asked to help.
The volunteer with the most hours logged was Janell Jessup, logging 881 hours with BUCART and CERT. Jessup also holds a leadership position as Co-Coordinator and Public Outreach for BUCART.
Anyone interested in joining either organization may go online to bucoks.com/713/CERT-Classes or contact Emergency Management at 316-733-9796.
