Chesapeake Bay Community Needs Help

HUNTINGTOWN, Md. (WUSA) Exhausted residents of the Neeld Estate Neighborhood near Plums Point are seeking help from volunteers and the National Guard to save their flooded homes.

Dozens of homeowners, their relatives and neighbors have been filling sandbags since Thursday to shore up the half a dozen waterside homes which were a mere forty yards away from the Bay before the seasons first Nor Easter hit last Thursday. "We need help, we can't do this alone anymore" said homeowner Mary Reiley.

Three days of heavy winds and waves virtually destroyed the beach and now the waves are lapping at the homes exterior walls and foundations. "We are using the sandbags to keep the water from undermining the foundations" explained volunteer Fred Bauer.

Volunteers of all ages, from pre-teens to seniors,  were still at work Saturday morning and afternoon trying to beat the next high tide expected at midnight. 

The heavy labor is taking its toll on all those involved in the backbreaking work of filling sandbags, loading and unloading them from a truck and placing them by the shore.  "Its manual labor and its tough" groaned Jim Larson as he hauled one sand bag after another from a pick up truck.

Without a beach separating the Bay from those houses, the structures would  need to be abandoned. Homeowners tell 9 News Now that Governor Martin O'Malley's office says the state will restore the beach at some point and build a seawall to prevent similar incidents.

Anyone wishing to volunteer this weekend to fill sandbags can find out more information by visiting the Neeld Estate website:  http://neeldestate.com/index.html