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Fredrica Drotos gasped when she saw the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapse before her on television. She watched rescue workers treat victims and search for survivors and wondered if she could have done the same.  

“If something like that happens or if a natural disaster occurs here, I don’t want to be standing on the side unable to help myself or others,” said Drotos, 40. “I hate feeling useless. I want to know how to help.”  

Now she does.  

Like hundreds of Berkeley residents, Drotos has completed a city-sponsored Community Emergency Response Training course.  

Established in 1989 after the Loma Prieta earthquake, the program, which falls under the city’s Office of Emergency Services, provides free emergency training to anyone, ages 18 or older, who lives or works in Berkeley.  

Courses are available in Disaster First Aid, Light Search and Rescue, Fire Suppression, Disaster Mental Health, Shelter Operations, Earthquake Retrofitting and Basic Personal Preparedness. Classes are usually held on Saturdays and can last anywhere from two to seven hours  

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, program coordinator Dory Ehrlich said there has been an increase in enrollment, though she did not have class-size figures available.  

“Preparedness is not something people usually think about when things are going well,” said Ehrlich. “But I think Sept. 11 made people aware of their vulnerability and the importance of being prepared. Our classes have been more popular ever since.”  

Although the terrorist attacks have not sparked a change to the curriculum, Ehrlich said all of the courses provide basic information on what to do in any emergency situation.  

“If a disaster strikes, the police, firefighters and hospitals will be overwhelmed,” said Ehrlich. “So we’re teaching people how to take care of themselves and their neighbors, to be self-sufficient for five to seven days until professional help can arrive.”  

Drotos, who signed up for the disaster first aid class prior to Sept. 11 at the encouragement of her neighborhood association in Panoramic Hill, said her main reason for enrolling was earthquakes – not terror.  

“The Hayward Fault runs right through Memorial Stadium and along lower Panoramic Way,” she said. “If an earthquake hits and makes the road fall, how are ambulances and fire trucks going to get to us? Residents have to be prepared.”  

Drotos’s instructor Stan Sprague, a retired Berkeley firefighter, said that he teaches students how to perform triage, establish airways, control bleeding, recognize shock, make splints and treat burns.  

“I learned how to assess situations – how to help as many people as possible with the least amount of resources,” said Drotos. “I feel much more confident now about what to do in a crisis.”  

“We spend a lot of time discussing ways to improvise,” said Sprague. “You need flexibility of the mind in a disaster situation. For instance, I show them how to open an airway by demonstrating on someone lying down on a table, but in a real situation you might not have a flat surface available.”  

Sprague said his biggest frustration with the program is course length.  

“I would like to teach CPR, but there’s just not enough time in three hours,” he said.  

Although several cities offer emergency training programs to residents, Ehrlich said Berkeley is unique in that it allows people to take as many or as few courses as they wish. She also said the city offers basic personal preparedness talks in the neighborhoods and to schools, businesses and religious groups. It conducted 48 presentations last year alone. 

“I want to take more classes now,” said Drotos. “I’d like to learn CPR and just keep reinforcing my knowledge. Because these are things you don’t do everyday, I feel like I need to continually refresh myself and let them really sink in my brain.” 

Ehrlich said the program was suspended in the mid-1990s because of funding problems but then revitalized in 1999 at the urging of city officials. Since then, the city has trained upward of a thousand people in 67 courses.  

The most recent session of classes ended in October, but another will start in January.  

Classes this month will be reserved exclusively for city employees. Ehrlich said they are already full with more than 20 people signed up for each.  

“People really get turned on to this stuff,” Sprague said. “Knowing what to do in a disaster is such a valuable skill. It saves lives.”