The City of Encinitas’ Public Works Department hosted a Sandbag Give-a-Way Event for residents Saturday. They had a total of 1,500 sandbags to give away and each resident could get up to 10.

The department was expecting 50 to 100 residents to show up to get some sandbags. Jayme Foster, a program assistant for the city Public Works Department puts together all of the sandbags with her team, which were paid for with taxpayers’ money.

According to her, they hand them out twice a year before and after the rainy season. Since they can’t respond to every problem, this is a great way to help people protect their houses from flooding. It is, however, important to know that you can get sandbags at any store like Home Depot or Lowes if you need more than 10.

The operation field supervisor, Rob Tobin, said that out of every part of Encinitas, Leucadia residents are the most at risk for flooding. He also pointed out that a lot of people don’t stack their sandbags correctly and when stacking sandbags, you need to always place them in a brick pattern, overlapping them so it resembles how bricks are stacked.
Multiple Encinitas residents showed up for the sandbags all day. One resident said it was his first time and he heard about it from Nextdoor, a private social network for neighborhood communities.