LOS ANGELES

CALIFORNIANS RUNNING from a potential tsunami following a magnitude 7 earthquake, are being warned that the emergency is not a movie.

“Californians are so used to movies about natural disasters that every time a warning is issued, the first thing they think of is another catastrophe movie being filmed,” says Pedro Hercules, an illegal immigrant who broke out of prison in El Salvador, and who says he makes a “good” living cleaning human excrement and drug needles from affluent streets in Los Angeles and San Francisco. “And on top of that, so much of the state is a natural disaster in its own right, that Californians often just shrug their shoulders now when warned that the end of the world is nigh. Some may even welcome it to put them out of their misery.”