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Al Dorsky listened intently to the call coming in over the multi-use two-way radio system (MURS). A reedy voice emanated from the small box sitting on a card table at Rinconada Fire Station No. 3: Smoke was coming from a house on Greer Road and a person was unconscious inside, the voice said.

Dorsky recorded the information on a sheet of paper, ready to dispatch a Palo Alto Neighborhood Disaster Activities (PANDA) unit to the scene. But the Saturday call was only a drill, fortunately. Teams of residents and volunteer first responders practiced for the "Big One."

Saturday's half-day event demonstrated just how valuable a citizen brigade can be in a disaster, helping to free up the city's precious resources -- firefighters, police and other emergency personnel -- to deal with the larger and more dangerous elements of a disaster.

If the event had been real, PANDA volunteers -- residents trained to be first responders in a disaster -- would rush to the Greer home to aid the unconscious person and help put out the fire. They would take the unconscious person from the house and radio for an ambulance.

The PANDA members would have assessed and blocked off areas where power lines were down. They would extricate victims from under debris, stop bleeding and splint broken bones. And where life has ebbed, they remove bodies to be taken to the morgue.

Saturday's drills, which covered parts of the city served by Fire Stations 3, 4 and 5, were designed to train volunteers and to test and demonstrate the value of citizen mobilization in the event of a disaster.

It was 1 p.m., and Ann Crichton, Midtown neighborhood preparedness coordinator, sat by her Family Radio Service (FRS) radio at home. The low-wattage radio picks up communications by runners Crichton has dispatched to walk the block.

The low wattage limits the range of the transmission to reduce interference with other volunteers in other neighborhoods.

Runners are the "eyes and ears" of the neighborhood, spotting smoke, flames, leaning or damaged buildings and listening for cries from trapped residents. A binder contains information about which homes have elderly or disabled residents and children, Crichton said.

When she receives a communication from a runner, Crichton radios a liaison at her local fire station with information about the damage. As the neighborhood or network coordinator, she is also in constant communication with other block coordinators, persons who take in information from runners on their blocks and radio that information to Crichton.

In the first hour or two of a disaster, all of the information about a neighborhood's condition and its residents has been assessed and passed on.

PANDA members spring into action, driving to areas to cordon off downed power lines and help the injured or ill. The big stuff, the things they can't do, such as putting out a major blaze or removing a bio-hazard or toxic leak, are left to professional police and firefighters.

On Saturday, the group practiced response to a major earthquake. Cynthia Campbell, a victim, was trapped under a heavy workout bench at a fitness center. Vinnie Biberdorf, a Los Altos resident and Red Cross volunteer, lay unconscious and moaning on the floor.

PANDA members searched the building, calling out to any victims that might be trapped. Campbell, conscious and bleeding from a huge gash on her arm, cried out. The PANDAS removed the heavy equipment from atop the women, pulling Campbell out.

As faux blood gushed from her wound, the volunteers assessed her status, checking her lucidity and examining a burn on the side of her face and several cuts on her head.

Campbell was given a color-coded card with an "X" marked to indicate the level of trauma she sustained and describing the nature of her injuries. Yellow means delayed -- the injuries are minor and care isn't immediate; green indicates injuries in need of care but less critical, such as a fractured arm or leg; red requires immediate care. Black means deceased.

The volunteers are also color coded. The Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES) members, coordinated by the Palo Alto Fire Department Office of Emergency Services. They wear yellow vests and handle communications and the radio network between the volunteers and city police, ambulance, fire and hospitals.

PANDAs wear green vests.

Campbell's gushing arm is a wrap-around rubberized injury, much like a Halloween mask. But this one is equipped with a valve where she can spurt fake blood, so PANDA members treating injuries can practice caring for this type of wound. She is taken to a chair and hooked up to an intravenous line, and given a liter of blood.

This isn't Campbell's first time playing victim.

"I was trapped on a bus previously at Moffett," she said of a Santa Clara County exercise.

Biberdorf has come to from being unconscious , having been appropriately recovered, tagged and rescued.

As a Red Cross volunteer, she said she is constantly aware of the threat of a major earthquake.

"The Red Cross is focusing on the 'big one' all the time. We know we'll have shelters open," she said. But caring for hysterical and injured people could quickly overwhelm the local chapter, so having trained citizens as first responders is critical.

At a triage center set up at Rinconada Park, large blankets in the same colors as indicated on the medical assessment cards -- yellow, green, red and black -- are spread out on the lawn.

Triage is probably the most challenging part of the training, Bruce Heister, a PANDA member and trainer, said.

"With triage, you are on your own. People get hung up on making life-and-death decisions, but what everybody follows is a checklist.

"You're not there to save the one heart-attack victim. This is mass casualties," he said.

Kala Fisher's leg is ripped open. She has a minor compound fracture and is being attended to by David Yen of PANDA. Unlike Rachel McDonald, who has a compound fracture and is disoriented on a red blanket, Fisher is on the green blanket, requiring less immediate care.

Fisher said she has been a victim "many times."

"I usually like to be a victim to make it as real as possible. If something were to happen, you get an appreciation for how long it might take to get help in a disaster," she said.

Two women -- difficult types -- on the yellow blanket shouted out complaints. They were in the "delayed" category for minor injuries.

"Usually, you find that the screamers are the minors," Heister said.

The drills might have been serious, but the victims weren't without gallows humor.

"Put that woman with the red shirt and compound fracture on the morgue blanket," one woman called out, teasing McDonald.

Nearby, Rick Swan is shrieking in agony. He was found under a concrete stairway at a stadium and has a compound fracture to his leg, he said, between shrieks.

In a real earthquake, Swan would have been extricated from the crumbled stairway by a cribbing team, shoring up the rubble. At the fire station, Kristine Taylor, Robert Paugh, Merrill Newman and Bert Laurence used wedges and a wood fulcrum to practice ratcheting a heavy table off a victim -- in this case, a mannequin.

Once cleared of the heavy object, the team pulled the victim out from under and carefully lifted him onto a stretcher board, strapping him on. They moved the victim to an area where he could be taken by medical teams to the hospital. It's not uncommon to have victims with spinal injuries, and careful handling can prevent further injury or paralysis, Heister said.

"This is one area where you teach them to really slow down," he said.

Back at triage, the team received feedback.

"One thing is that you kept hitting my broken arm with your knee," McDonald told Leif Schaumann, the PANDA who tended to her injuries.

"The more you train, the more confident you get," said Lenore Cymes, co-coordinator of the triage drills.

"If and when a disaster happens, you have some training and confidence. Instead of just showing up and asking about what to do, we know how. We have the logistics all set up," she said.

Dorsky said Palo Alto's emergency preparation isn't just about the city in a vacuum.

Palo Alto RACES ham-radio operators helped set up countywide communications when someone sabotaged fiber optic cables on April 9, cutting off land line and cellular service and disrupting hospital and other critical communications services, he said.

But he warned that residents should not take the well-publicized PANDA program for granted. The neighborhood block preparedness program, which he and Midtown Residents Association leader Annette Ashton have pushed, needs 2,500 neighborhood volunteers to cover the city.

"We're having a hard time" getting enough residents engaged at the "eyes and ears" level, Dorsky said.

Crichton, the Midtown neighborhood-preparedness coordinator, said it takes little time and the benefits in a disaster are inestimable.

"In an emergency you can get excited and if you don't practice you can lose your head," she said. "It's really not any effort at all. It's a lot of fun and it's a good way to meet neighbors," she said.