L.A. earthquake spawns more late-night mocking from Kimmel, Fallon

Mockery of Los Angeles’ response to the magnitude 4.4 earthquake that struck earlier this week continued on the late-night talk show circuit Tuesday -- only this time the main targets weren’t just scrambling news anchors.

Jimmy Kimmel, who a day earlier poked fun at L.A.’s local news anchors for their on-air reactions to the quake, took to the streets of Hollywood for his “Lie Witness News” segment, which fooled unsuspecting passersby into believing that “the Big One” had been forecast to strike the next day at a predetermined time.

One man had no problem recalling when he first heard about “the forecast.”

“It was about 1:15, it was on the Facebook .… I looked at the seismology, some of the charts that were going on, and they were saying that, ‘Yeah, tomorrow.’”

Of course, no such prediction had been made outside the likelihood for aftershocks, but, one by one, gullible subjects fell for the leading questions.

Would they eat a pet if they had to?

“I guess we’ll see when the times comes,” one woman said.

Do they have any loved ones in the “death sectors?”

“I do,” another woman replied.

Did she have anything to say to them? “Be careful.”

A clip Kimmel featured Monday night of KTLA-TV anchors Chris Schauble and Megan Henderson ducking under their desk as the quake hit went viral.

Much of the attention has focused on Schauble’s meme-worthy reaction, complete with looks of shock and a panicked scramble to get under the desk as the set shook around him.

After Kimmel’s first salvo on Monday night, Jimmy Fallon followed up with his own roast Tuesday on “The Tonight Show.”

In his imitation news anchor voice, Fallon took aim Tuesday night: “This just in -- I want my mommy.”

Schauble and his colleagues have largely owned their status as the anchors who had the biggest on-air freakout when the temblor struck in Sherman Oaks. They even replayed the Kimmel segment Tuesday morning for a bit of self-deprecation.

Schauble went so far as to make the image of his shocked face his Twitter profile picture.

“People have broken down that clip of us like a Zapruder film,” Schauble said. “They’ve broken it down to the nth degree.”

But for all the ribbing, Schauble and Henderson got a big backup from Lucy Jones, a seismologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, who called the desk-ducking “absolutely the right thing to do.”

jason.wells@latimes.com

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