The flames, the earthquake, the Malibu fires, the floods, the riots, the anger.
Calamity has become a guest that won't go home.
The dark side of the Sunshine State.
On Hollywood Boulevard, there may still be stars, but now they share the sidewalk with
the National Guard, the homeless, and the disillusioned tourists.
There's a lot more violence here than there is back home.
People are unhappy.
People don't have jobs and it's hard.
When they show it on TV, it's people running on the beach having fun.
California has become disappointing too, for the people who live here.
Once you see one star, you see them all.
For us, California dreamers, it's dead because we don't live it.
Well, hey, how we doing tonight?
For the troubled people who live on these streets, there is a longing for a vanished
way of life.
California will never get back like it used to be.
If it had an earthquake, it would be the rise or something.
I'm going to leave too.
For many natives, California has become a state of confusion.
It is the best of times that suddenly overnight can become the worst of times.
And the dilemma is whether to leave it or love it.
In my opinion, it's still a dream.
There's opportunity that has to be taken advantage of in California.
On the scorched hills above Malibu, maybe it'll scare some people away.
Paul Kears hasn't given up.
When you look around and all you see is rubble, but what you don't see is what was here before
and what will be here again.
I love it here.
It's so beautiful.
For April and Carl Kamm, there's just so much chaos and catastrophe going on.
Despite fires and floods, there is no place like this California home.
Now, it's amazing how beautiful this place is with so much disaster and suffering associated
with it.
And it really shows you that if you want to live here, you have to pay the price.
For many people here, that high price is life on the edge.
Just one spark or one tremor away from disaster.
But growing here too, reason for hope.
In Los Angeles, Bob McNamara for Eye on America.
And that's part of our world tonight.
Coming up on this CBS station, a special edition of 48 Hours, live from here in Southern California.
We will show you scenes you have not seen before, take you behind the scenes of this
devastating earthquake and how California is coming back from it.
That's 48 Hours, Aftershock, special program tonight at 10.
I'll see you then.
I'm Nicholson.