Mummified in sanitary napkins, they were loaded into newspaper delivery trucks.

Everybody seemed to enjoy the disaster, although some sobersides might question whether it ought to have been fun.

The retirees and the junior high kids got to ham it up as victims, the rescuers trotted heroically about like plumed knights, and the Fire Department helicopter whipped in with a flourish worthy of a Vietnam War movie.

Theater and reality overlap and slip back and forth at an earthquake rehearsal.

Social science researchers say that disasters bring out the generous, cooperative side of human beings. Many disaster stories recount hilarious jokes, cracked under the worst of circumstances.

So it probably should not be a surprise that there was a lighter side to a rehearsal for the Big One, the devastating earthquake that scientists say will inevitably hammer the Los Angeles area some day.

The big quake and its unpredictable onset--the uncertain price of living in the Southern California sunshine--are now a standard subject for black humor at social gatherings.

There are more and more rehearsals for it, largely the work of City Councilman Hal Bernson, who represents Northridge, Granada Hills and Chatsworth. Bernson is to earthquake preparation as Nancy Reagan is to anti-drug campaigns.

Bernson has been staging ever more elaborate drills during the city’s annual earthquake preparedness week, which he fathered eight years ago. This week, the show came to The Times publishing plant in the Valley.

The rehearsals have several purposes. One is to give experience to those who are supposed to help with the aftermath of the Big One, especially at coordinating their actions with those from other agencies.

The other is to generate publicity to seize the public’s attention, so the threat will be taken more seriously, promoting more planning, leading to more and bigger rehearsals, creating more publicity, and so on.

Bernson and Frank Borden, commander of the city Fire Department’s disaster preparedness division, emceed the proceedings, which provided practice for the Fire Department, The Times’ earthquake team, Times employees and the 12th Council District Volunteers.

The 12th is Bernson’s district. Although all City Council districts are entitled to have city-trained teams of disaster volunteers, only Bernson has actually fielded a force. Mostly middle-aged or then some, they wear bright green vests and hard hats.

At the entrance to The Times plant, set builders from Paramount Studios piled rubble--fake steel beams, masonry and glass shards. Borden set off the “earthquake,” hoisting a ghetto blaster for a crowd of about 50 spectators and kibitzers and playing a tape of a rumbling sound.

Stagecraft smoke billowed out the door and “casualties” stumbled through it. Paramedics had done a very good job of making them up to appear injured. Hideously burned faces, shattered limbs, rivers of blood running over their faces--if Grand Guignol alone could defeat the malevolence of the tectonic plates, there would be no Big One to worry about.

Almost immediately, the Green Panthers, who had been lurking in the street, came down the driveway at a huff-puff jog, lumbering to the rescue. They unlimbered their backpacks of makeshift first-aid items, demonstrating how major wounds can be bandaged with sanitary napkins and bound down with panty hose.

Although 10 of the “victims” were Times employees, 32 were supplied by Bernson’s office from the ranks of the disaster volunteers and a contingent of students from Patrick Henry Junior High School in Granada Hills.

“These are professional victims,” a Bernson aide said. “We’ve used most of them five or six times now, and they’re really getting quite good at this.”

Most of the “victims” made only bashful, low moans, but some unleashed histrionics. One woman tried repeatedly to go back into the building, screaming incoherently and struggling with a security guard who was practicing rescuing her. A man with a mangled leg muttered nobly to would-be rescuers to leave him and save the others first.

He dragged himself along the pavement with his fingertips, which must have hurt for real. Here was a sight to inspire pity in almost anyone, except the knot of sportswriters who had gathered to snicker and mock, mockery and snickery being not only professional requirements of sportswriters, but a way of life.

The sportswriters practiced for their part in the Big One, when they will be expected to crack jokes to keep up morale. Unfortunately, almost none of their jokes can be printed here, but they are up to their task.

A Fire Department helicopter evacuated the most seriously injured. Others, mummified in sanitary napkins and bound in panty hose, were loaded into newspaper delivery trucks.

“The good news is, they’re patched up and on the trucks,” one of the sportswriters said. “The bad news is, the circulation guys are going to chuck them off at 7-Elevens all over the Valley.”

This was, in a way, a rehearsal for Thursday, when City Hall will be “destroyed.”

Bernson’s well-practiced professional victims will be maimed and killed again, but some City Council members are also scheduled to be bloodied and bandaged. When it comes to moaning, groaning and carrying on, the citizen victims are about to come up against the pros.