Fearing floods, San Anselmo residents stock up sand bags

Home and business owners raced to fill and drag sandbags to their doors before flood waters reach it first.

“We just have a house that’s on a hill and we need to make sure the water doesn’t get in the windows and the doors as it goes around the back. It gets pretty full of water in the backyard,” said Katie Walters.

The weekend’s storm forecast calls for above average rainfall. Even if residents haven’t experienced a San Anselmo flood, everyone in the city knows it can happen.

“Well, we had the 2005 flood, but we had a close call just a few weeks ago. So it could happen any time,” said Public Works village volunteer, Kathy Schaefer.

“We weren’t here yet, but we heard all about the stories of 2005,” said new homeowner Peter Martin, who enlisted the help of his young son and his friend to fill up 22 sandbags.

The free sandbag area set up by Public Works was open all day, with sand truck dumps every 15 minutes. Rich Sharp and his daughter Alena joked that they looked like a bobsled team pushing a heavy shopping cart full of sandbags to their car.

“They were pretty heavy,” said Alena Sharp.“Sand is supposed to be light when you build a sandcastle, but not these ones.”

PG&E said it has crews staging in the North Bay and in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The main concern for PG&E is the wind that is often the culprit in bringing down power lines.