Volunteers at Seal Beach Fill Sandbags For Community in Preparation of Hurricane Hilary

ORANGE COUNTY, CA, Aug. 18 (KNN) — Amid growing concerns and uncertainty over Hurricane Hilary’s trajectory, residents, city works, and CERT teams wasted no time Friday preparing for a worst case scenario.

Volunteers from the West County Community Emergency Response Team were busy all morning at the Seal Beach Pier parking lot, located at 900 Ocean Avenue, shoveling sand into bags, tying them, and handing them out to community members.

This team is comprised of volunteers from Buena Park, Cypress, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Seal Beach and Westminster who assist city governments during disaster events.

Their work began at 8 a.m. filling dozens of sandbags while residents pulled up to the bagging area. There, volunteers helped load their vehicles with however many bags they needed in order to protect their homes from the anticipated flooding.

Resident Cynthia Abernathy spoke with Key News Network on camera about how thankful she was for the volunteers’ efforts, and that if it wasn’t for the sandbags, flooding would seep in through her sliding door.

The CERT team worked until about noon before tearing down. However, a surplus of sandbags still remained available at the very west end of the parking lot, west of the pier.

Meanwhile, large construction equipment operated by Seal Beach City Public Works crews worked hard to build a sand berm along the beach to protect beachfront homes from the high surf that is expected to start Sunday morning.

The hurricane is expected to weaken and make landfall into Southern California at tropical storm strength or less beginning Saturday.

This is the first tropical storm since 1939 for California.

Nathan Holguin, Video Journalist / KNN