6.2 Quake Shaakes 3 States, Wrecks Homes Near Bishop : 50 Campers Stranded; 3 Power Plants Shut Down

An earthquake measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale hit the Eastern Sierra at 7:42 a.m. today, knocking 20 mobile homes from their foundations in Chalfant Valley, shattering plate-glass windows in downtown Bishop and briefly trapping 50 campers at the Pleasant Valley Reservoir northwest of town.

No injuries were immediately reported in California’s fourth, and strongest, temblor in the last two weeks.

A hill collapsed beneath a road into the Pleasant Valley campground seven miles outside Bishop, causing authorities to evacuate 50 campers by a secondary road.

The chief engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in the Owens Valley said three of the agency’s power plants, producing a total of 110 megawatts of electricity, were knocked out of service in the Owens River gorge between Bishop and Mammoth Lakes. There was no interruption of power in Los Angeles from the damage.

The quake, followed a few minutes later by a 5.2 aftershock, and then many others, was centered between the tiny communities of Chalfant Valley and Hammil, 15 miles north of Bishop in the same vicinity rattled by a 5.5 temblor Sunday. About 200 smaller shocks were recorded in the area in a 24-hour period.

Salt Lake City Swayed

Today’s quake was felt over most of California and in Nevada and Utah as well. Reports of swaying buildings came from Chico in the north to Los Angeles on the south and as far east as Salt Lake City. The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was only about four miles below the earth’s surface, which is why it was felt over such a widespread area.

The Bishop quake was apparently unrelated to a 5.9 temblor centered near Palm Springs on July 8 and a 5.3 quake off the coast near Oceanside on July 13. Altogether, this has been the most serious seismic activity in the state since the May 2, 1983, earthquake that did widespread destruction in downtown Coalinga in the San Joaquin Valley.

The worst damage today was in Chalfant Valley, where, in addition to the 20 mobile homes knocked off their foundations, at least two homes were reported destroyed and all 50 structures in the community were damaged to some degree. The town’s water supply was disrupted.

Victor Benchetler, a building supplier in Chalfant Valley, said he and his wife, Kathy, were asleep when “all of a sudden the whole house felt like it was going to fall down. . . . We ran into the baby’s room and grabbed him. Pictures, everything, were falling off the wall. Two console TVs fell over. . . . A chandelier broke off. . . . I’ve been in rolling quakes, but this was more shaking side to side rather than rolling.”

In downtown Bishop, there was structural damage at the First Sierra Bank building, where part of the front brick facade fell onto the sidewalk, and at a Burger King restaurant, where part of the ceiling collapsed. Plate-glass windows were shattered at a number of businesses.

Powerless for an Hour

Power was knocked out for more than an hour in some parts of Bishop. The Bishop area, with a population of around 5,000, is the largest urban center in the Eastern Sierra.

Today’s quake occurred about 25 miles southeast of the Mammoth Lakes area and the Long Valley Caldera, where authorities had given notice of possible volcanic activity after a spate of earthquakes in 1980.

David Hill, in charge of the U.S. Geological Survey’s monitoring of the seismic and volcanic situation in the area from a USGS outpost in Menlo Park, said of the latest temblors:

“These earthquakes are located . . . east of the Long Valley Caldera. They are probably associated with the fault system on the west side of the White Mountains (north and east of Bishop).