Residents Stock Up on Sandbags to Beat the Rain : Weather: Firefighters report that demand for burlap sacks is heavier than before most storms. Filled bags can protect hillside homes from slides.

They’re ugly, but they work.

Although sandbags add little to outdoor decor, many homeowners--worried by forecasts of a violent rainstorm today--showed up Monday at fire stations throughout the San Fernando Valley’s hillside areas to pick up the thick burlap sacks that may protect their homes from dangerous torrents of water and mud.

Some homeowners have used the brown bags to form retaining walls for years, but others got the habit after heavy rains in February flooded intersections, ruined houses and washed cars off canyon roads.

When Shadow Hills resident Larry Rotoli picked up 50 burlap bags, filled them with sand and surrounded his home with them a month before those rains, his neighbors thought that he was crazy, he said.

But he said they changed their minds when they saw that he had beaten the rush for bags that developed later and managed to protect his property while the surrounding hillsides melted and slid into their houses.

This year, Rotoli is again ready for the storm. He tossed the bags he picked up from a Sun Valley fire station into the trunk of his car Monday, and said he planned to spend the night filling the sacks with sand so that he could once again “beat the rains.”

Throughout valley and canyon areas, many others have taken advantage of offers by the Los Angeles city and county fire departments of free sandbags to prevent flooding.

Although the fire departments could not provide a figure of how many bags were given out because residents came and went throughout the day, officials said the number of people visiting stations to take home bags was heavier than before most storms.

“People have become more aware of disaster preparedness because of last year’s floods,” said Capt. Steve Ruda, commander of the county Fire Department’s Community Service Unit.

Ruda said most people do not prepare and then try to pick up bags after storms start, when they are harder to find. They are also more difficult to put in place once rains begin, he said, because the bags tend to slide on rain-slippery slopes.

Each resident may take from 20 to 25 sandbags from fire stations, which often keep up to 30,000 on hand.

Some may take more. Rotoli said he sent his wife to another station to get a second batch.

“Whenever there is a prediction of rain, we get people in,” said Los Angeles Fire Capt. David Moore, who heads a fire station on Coldwater Canyon Avenue in Sherman Oaks.

However, Los Angeles Fire Capt. Craig Fletcher said few residents from areas around his Sherman Oaks fire station picked up bags Monday morning, despite this week’s weather warnings.

“Usually the public waits until the last minute,” Craig said. “We’ll be busy tomorrow.”

Woodland Hills homeowner Danny Aclan stood under darkening skies and looked warily at the gravel slope in front of his house, but said he was confident that the upcoming storm would pose no more danger than the past few rains.

“I hear we’re only going to get about two to four inches” of rain, Aclan said. “But I still keep the radio on and monitor the weather reports.”

At a nearby fire station at Canoga Avenue and Ventura Boulevard, hillside residents picked through a stack of empty burlap bags and loaded them onto cars and pickup trucks. As of Monday morning, the station had about 500 bags left from the 4,000 it started with in November, Capt. David Wagner said.

Homeowner Patrice Smythe grabbed a dozen sacks and looked up at the darkening skies. “I remember what happened last February,” Smythe said. “Can’t hurt to be careful.”

After picking up their bags, wary homeowners flocked to hardware stores, where sand and roof patching materials were in short supply, store operators said.

“Things are crazy here today,” said Richard Johnson, manager of a Builders Emporium in Woodland Hills. “People are coming in looking for sand, sealer and sheeting to cover their roofs.”

Although some residents look to hardware stores for sand, Moore said the first question novice sandbaggers ask is: “Where is the dirt that’s supposed to go in the bag?”

Moore said he tells people that filling up the bags depends on their own resourcefulness.

In addition to empty bags, the fire departments provide illustrated guides on filling them. The bags may be filled with dirt, sand or rocks, officials said.

Antelope Valley residents were also expecting heavy rains, and Palmdale’s Department of Public Works has made sandbags available for residents of the city as well as surrounding county areas.

Residents may pick up the bags at Palmdale City Hall today, city officials said.

Some worried that today may be too late, however.

“I’d rather just put the bags down now,” Smythe said with a grin. “I don’t want to ride my house down a hill tomorrow.”