Speakers

CEO and editor Lois Henry has spent 30 years covering the San Joaquin Valley.

She was raised on a ranch east of Fresno and attended Clovis High School, then Fresno State where she majored in Journalism.

While still in college, she worked the late night and weekend shifts at the Fresno Bee covering cops and writing obits. After graduating in 1989, she worked in the Bee’s south valley bureau covering Hanford and Lemoore.

In 1990, she moved to Bakersfield where she took a job covering eastern Kern County – Edwards Air Force Base and China Lake Naval Weapons Center – for The Bakersfield Californian. Over the years, she had a variety of beats including social services, the oil industry, city government, county government and a stint in Sacramento at The Californian’s capitol bureau.

Henry spent 10 years as a manager, rising in the ranks from Metro Editor to Asst. Managing Editor overseeing the paper’s 80+ newsroom employees. She was the lead editor for the paper’s many award-winning projects.

In 2007, she began a twice weekly, investigative column and was able to focus on one of her passions – water.

Though her column delved deep into this sometimes arcane topic, readers responded with overwhelmingly positive comments.

Valley residents innately understand the importance of water. Henry has helped develop that understanding by untangling the complicated knots of rights, lawsuits, contracts and deals by which water is moved and consumed.

She plans to continue that mission through SJV Water.

Henry lives with her husband, four dogs and two cats in Bakersfield. 

Georgianna Armstrong, Emergency Service Manager from the Kern County Fire Department Emergency Operations Center (EOC) presented on the Reverse 911 called Ready Kern and the Emergency Plan if the Lake Isabella Dam failed. The following provides a brief overview and links for more info.

Ready Kern - Kern County has implemented ReadyKern, a state-of-the-art emergency notification system to alert residents and businesses about natural disasters and other crises. The new emergency notification system enables Kern County to provide essential information quickly in a variety of situations, such as earthquakes, severe weather, fires, floods, or evacuation of buildings or neighborhoods. Go to this link to register http://www.kerncountyfire.org/readykern.php

She also presented the plan in the event the Lake Isabella Dam failed.  Walking us through the process she explained the daily inspections.  In early 2008, the United States Army Corps of Engineers completed the initial preparation of an updated map which shows the areas around metropolitan Bakersfield which would likely be flooded in the unlikely case that the Dam should fail at Lake Isabella.  Click here to learn more and to view maps and learn more about the numerous plans the county is working on to become prepare from evacuation to transporting the medically fragile.