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Washington County
Posted: Mar 13, 2026 11:37 AMUpdated: Mar 13, 2026 11:37 AM
Cox Recognized with a Lifetime Contribution to Emergency Management Award
Tom Davis
Recently, at the 2026 Oklahoma Emergency Management Association conference in Oklahoma City, our Director, Kary Cox, was recognized with a Lifetime Contribution to Emergency Management Award.
In a Facebook post from WCEM, is a summary of what led to him receiving this award:
Kary has served for 40 years in emergency management with 31 of those in Washington County and 9 years in Beaver County. He has built 2 successful EM programs and assisted several others.
Kary is the only person to have served in every position on the Oklahoma Emergency Management Association Executive Board as Area VP, Secretary, Treasurer, and serving 2 terms as Vice President and 2 terms at President. He also served as EOC Manager for the state conference for several years and created a communications plan for the event as well as for numerous other events and incidents.
As the lead Incident Command Systems Instructor for the Oklahoma Office of Homeland Security, most emergency managers across the state have taken classes from Kary. He has been teaching Homeland Security, FEMA, and Fire Service classes for over 30 years and provides an excellent mix of book knowledge with relevant personal experience in his classes.
He was a part of the very first OK-First weather program class and the first Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) instructor in the State of Oklahoma. Kary was also part of the very first Individual Safe Room grant program and served as a shelter inspector across several counties in NE Oklahoma and has since been responsible for 3 safe room grant projects in Washington County with almost 250 shelters awarded and 1,000 individual shelters registered.
His experience and contributions are not limited to Oklahoma as he has deployed multiple times to Texas and Louisianna for hurricane response and has provided training in multiple states including Alaska.
His experience and commitment to Emergency Management and to public safety has earned him multiple awards and recognition including OEMA Director of the Year in 1998, Commendation from OEM Director in 2010, Commendation from Southern Area.
Red Team in 2017 and the Gold Team in 2018, Gary Roarke Leadership Award in 2023, and Recognized for his support of SafeNOW a forensic interviewing program related to domestic violence in 2024.
In 2024, he secured federal grant funds (ARPA) to build a new Emergency Operations Center and managed the design and construction of the $6.5 million dollar project that will provide communications, training, and emergency operations for Washington County far into the future.
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