Volunteers and Kern County Parks employees teamed up today to help clear out the land that makes up the Whiskey Flat Encampment, which was severely damaged by floods during the storms last year in Kernville.
“For the area we’re standing in right now, it was devastated last year back in March by what we call it the 100 year flood event,”said Gary Ananian, Director of the Kern River Conservancy, who helped organize the day’s cleanup with the Kernville Chamber of Commerce.
“This entire area that we’re studying was pretty much like a lake at one point.”
The flooding from the North Fork of the Kern River deposited massive amounts of debris, rocks and dirt into the area where the Whiskey Flat Encampment is held.
“We have a bunch of volunteers that are working,” said Ananian, adding that Kern County provided machinery and employees to help with the effort.
“We got the loaders out here, we got back hoes here, we have chippers out here.”
Starting early the volunteers were cleaning brush, sawing and moving wood in a pile. Kern County Parks employees used machinery to deal with larger pieces of debris.