2 Cops Who Decided to Lie Down on Job

The city of Paramount’s newsletter recounts how a couple of L.A. County sheriff’s detectives traveled to Truth or Consequences, N.M., to extradite a suspect. While on the road, they encountered a tornado.

They became concerned when a country music radio program “was interrupted by an emergency broadcast telling all motorists to pull off the road and lie in a ditch!”

After debating “whether it was a possible Orson Welles thing, or maybe a ‘Candid Camera’ thing, our savvy urbanites concluded it looked more like a natural disaster thing, and complied,” the newsletter said.

After all, Angelenos aren’t used to that type of weather. Or are they? Read on.

L.A., WE HARDLY KNEW YE: If you believe Mike Davis’ book, “Ecology of Fear,” the L.A. area has:

* “Rainfall of a ferocity unrivaled anywhere on Earth, even in the tropical monsoon belts.”

* “The highest urban fire incidence in the nation,” in the Westlake area.

* A “tornado alley” from Santa Monica to Newport Bay and a higher incidence of tornadoes “than that for the state of Oklahoma, universally conceded to be Earth’s tornado capital.”

* Droughts that last as long as 200 years, giving the lie to rumors of its mild climate.

* “The California ground squirrel . . . one of the Earth’s most important biological reservoirs for the bubonic plague, the Black Death,” not to mention more mountain lions “than in Yellowstone.”

And, don’t forget, Davis writes, L.A. will become “the first great Northern Hemisphere city to be colonized by the Africanized honey bee [killer bee].”

What I don’t understand is how Davis could have omitted the recent invasion of fire ants. Maybe he didn’t want to be accused of sensationalism.

SO MUCH MATERIAL FOR SCREENWRITERS: I confess that while reading Davis’ book, I became afraid to look out the living room window to see what new disaster was befalling L.A. (I don’t think I can take another monsoon!)

But then I started to think. What Davis has forgotten is the balance of nature. L.A.’s fierce rains will douse L.A.’s fires. L.A.’s tornadoes will keep L.A.’s killer bees grounded. L.A.’s mountain lions will eat L.A.’s squirrels, and then die in the next 200-year drought (the last one here ended around the year 1100, by the way). Davis himself doesn’t seem to be worried. Where does he live? Boise, Idaho? New York? Paris?

Nope--Pasadena. Then again, it is east of that Newport-Santa Monica tornado belt. . . .

HEY, I THOUGHT THE CUSTOMER WAS ALWAYS RIGHT: “Talk about no respect!” quipped Lincoln Haynes of Rancho Palos Verdes after noticing how he was classified by an exterminator (see accompanying). And, no, I didn’t ask what type of insect was threatening Rancho Palos Verdes. I’ve got enough to worry about in L.A.

ANGELENOS OVERSEAS: Gavin Lee of L.A. was amused by the wording on a sign in China, which smacked of something you might find in Disneyland (see photo).

miscelLAny

After my suggestion that someone invent a Barney pinata, Lise Lucas wrote that she had seen one in the shape of the nauseatingly syrupy purple dinosaur.

“I went to a co-worker’s daughter’s birthday,” Lucas said. “When the older kids started to hit Barney, the younger kids--about eight of them--started to cry, ‘No, no, don’t hurt Barney.’ We had to remove all the kids under 6 [from the area].”

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Unless he’s blown away by a monsoon or tornado, Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (213) 237-7083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.