Just after 1 p.m., a handful of men and women dropped exhausted onto a patch of lawn beside a line of orange sandbags behind the Rivergreen Estates north of the Porter Bridge.

For six hours these volunteers and dozens of others had been lifting 50-pound bags of sand off a truck, passing them along a line, loading them into wheelbarrows and fitting them into a temporary flood wall. It would be 4 p.m. before the job was done and the 175 worn out, mud-caked volunteers could call it a day.

That line of 50-pound sandbags represents the most modest piece of a riverbank fortification effort that extends from the Porter Bridge to River Estates Mobile Home Park a mile to the north. Along that stretch, contractors and city workers have raised the west bank levees with 4,000-pound bags of sand called supersacks and flexible barriers filled with rock to withstand a flood event of 13,900 cubic feet of water per second. At issue is the compromised holding capacity of the Howard Hanson Dam.

The City of Auburn’s Office of Emergency Preparedness organized last Saturday’s work party.

“We’re shoring up the levees for King County,” said Todd O’Brien, a construction inspector for the City of Auburn who oversaw the effort. “These guys here are doing a great job and making my job easy.”

“…I don’t want to use the word amazed because it would imply I didn’t expect things to go this well, but I am amazed it’s going so well,” said Jessie Clark of OEP. “We didn’t have to twist anybody’s arm. The work is hard, and we’re just killing it.”

Emergency Preparedness put out the call via e-mail lists, HAM radio and Facebook and pulled in graduates of the Certified Emergency Response Team (CERT) training, volunteers from the Auburn Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Seventh-day Adventists, Auburn High School Honors Society, Auburn High School Key Club and the Future Business Leaders of America. Even Machinists Union Local 2700 from as far away as the City of Everett got in on the action.

The Latter-day Saints offered their church for a sign up and staging area. CERT members shuttled volunteers back and forth to the job site all day. The LDS also provided water and a place to rest.

“I am here to help out make sure it doesn’t flood because Auburn is so awesome,” said volunteer Sergei Holtz, 17, a sophomore at Auburn High.

“We live in Auburn, and my wife, my son and my daughter and we volunteer every year for whatever,” Laurence Randolph said. “It helps the community and the people. Right now, I’m shifting between loading up the truck and wheelbarrowing.”

“I am a CERT member. I love it,” said Shannacee Frasier as she lifted yet another bag.

The focus of construction on the barrier wall now shifts to points north and west of the River Mobile Estates, all the way to South 277th.

King County owns the levees, but the City is doing the work via contract.