With Kern County being one of the many places in California that Governor Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency, federal assistance will unlock funding for recovery in areas that were affected by Hurricane Hilary, in this case, a park in the Kern River Valley.

“We had damage through some of the residential areas, and some of the campgrounds that were damaged, and primarily riverside park in Kernville had significant damage, a lot of the park was washed out,” said Kern River Conservancy President, Gary Ananian.

He said Kern County Public Works and the Parks Department were working on repairing the park from the damage it saw from storms back in March.

But it only took two weeks of repairing until Tropical Storm Hilary struck.

“A lot of the work that contractors had done with Public Works and the Parks started going away. They had to redo all that about a week later. Once the water receded from the storm, they came back and had to repair everything they had just fixed,” said Ananian.

Now that President Biden approved the disaster declaration for FEMA to send federal aid to the areas affected, Ananian hopes that money will be put into recovering and redesigning the park, and if not, future storms will wash it away.

“Definitely this money should go to Public Works and the Parks Department, you know, Riverside Park was hammered. And if you live in Kern County, you’ve most likely visited Kernville in the summertime, and you saw the damage the park has sustained, and you saw how high the river was. The design and the work they’ve done was poorly done, so I can guarantee you that it’s all getting washed out again when we get a spring snowmelt in four to five months from now,” Ananian added.

He said people in Kern River Valley applied for FEMA funding for the storms in March but never got approved.

Source - https://bakersfieldnow.com