Santa Cruz County preparing for heavy rains

City and county crews in Santa Cruz are urging residents to prepare for heavy rains, including stocking up on sandbags for flood prone areas.

While the rain has already started, it’s not too late to stock up on sandbags.

Officials say they help to keep water away from your home or help drainage areas stay clear of leaves and debris.

Emergency services manager Rosemary Anderson says, “they can be critically helpful. Especially for people who live in flood prone areas or they live in areas that tend to have that localized flooding where water just pools up on the roadways.”

While it may seem obvious how to fill the sandbags, City of Santa Cruz Public Works Street Supervisor Richard Smith has some helpful tips, “only fill them up half way, it’s easier to stack, so you are going to have a lot easier time stacking multiple sandbags than trying to stack 10 sandbags that are completely filled by yourself.”

Smith says people have actually hurt themselves trying to pick up full bags by them self.

Anderson and Smith say depending on where you live and what areas get flooded, there are different ways to use the sandbags.

“Most people will put them right in front of their garage to prevent the water from going in there, if the front of their house, the front door is closest to the water they might put them around there and around the driveway.”

“Start somewhere on the perimeter of your house and then sandbag towards your house and make a nice wall, when you do make a wall of sandbags it’s good to have a piece of plastic to wrap around the sandbags to make them even more waterproof.”

There are more than a dozen places around Santa Cruz County to pick up sand bags, click here to see locations.

Officials suggest calling the site first to make sure there is still sand available.

For the City of Santa Cruz the sand mound is at Harvey West Park, and you must first pick the bags up at 230 Walnut Avenue or 1125 River Street.

Smith says you should only use the same sand bags for one rainy season, “bags tend to become contaminated after they’ve been sitting out in the water for days or weeks at a time and those contaminated sandbags should just be taken to the landfill, you can’t really re-use the sand inside them.”

For other emergency preparation information from the county, click here.