Mammoth’s Cable Station Rallies During Quake Swarm

In this Eastern Sierra town of 5,000, the only news outlets are two weekly newspapers and a usually unstaffed cable television station that broadcasts local news just three times a week.

It’s hardly propitious for emergency communications.

So when the Mammoth area was struck on Nov. 22 with 1,000 volcanic earthquakes--the worst day thus far of a quake swarm that started back in June--the mayor and town manager wondered how they could talk right away to an anxious populace.

They wanted to debunk rumors and, to the extent they honestly could, assuage concerns.

Within hours, thanks to a cable manager who was willing to help them improvise, Mayor Kathy Cage and Town Manager Tracy Fuller were on cable with a seven-minute videotape, and it was rebroadcast every half hour the rest of the night.

The cable manager, Dan McConnell, of US West-owned Channel 5 in Mammoth, did not stop there. He went on the air with his own special newscast on the quakes.

In their informal presentation, though not appearing anxious themselves, Cage and Fuller did not dissemble. “We live in an area that has been determined to be volcanic,” Cage said, and the quakes “are related to magmatic activity,” movements by molten rock, underground.

This in itself was refreshing, coming in a town that has often seemed in denial of the area’s volcanic prospects.

But the fact was, Cage and Fuller went on, the day’s quakes had not been quite strong enough for scientists monitoring the activity to call a volcanic alert. By afternoon, the quakes were tapering off, and there was no immediate cause for great concern. The bottom line: No actual eruption was in prospect for the moment.

“This is not the most activity we’ve ever seen at Mammoth,” Fuller said. “We had stronger quakes in 1983.”

But in the event that a quake caused a power outage that knocked the cable channel off the air, she suggested, just tune into Bishop’s FM radio station, KIBS, and town leaders would relay advisories there.

Cage had been on a chairlift at the Mammoth Mountain Ski Area when the strongest earthquake, a magnitude 4.8, occurred in midmorning. McConnell was out and about too and was reached by a pager.

McConnell, a resident of Mammoth Lakes for 18 years, said that at first “I was wondering whether they were overreacting. . . .

“But I just felt there was a personal civic obligation to give the community some information on what was happening,” he said.

McConnell tends to be somewhat humorous on the air. Even during his earthquake newscast, he could not resist mentioning that he had a talking dog.

“I ask what is on the outside of a tree, and he answers, ‘Bark, bark,’ ” he joked.

But he also broadcast detailed information taken off the U.S. Geological Survey’s Internet Web site that has become like a bible to many interested in the situation in the prehistorically active Long Valley Caldera around Mammoth Lakes.

The Web site can be reached at https://quake.wr.usgs.gov. It contains voluminous information on the volcanic monitoring in the Mammoth area and lists every quake that has occurred in the previous week. As many as 2,300 quakes have been listed recently.

In a real volcanic emergency, Town Manager Fuller said later, she and the mayor would like frequent access to the cable.

That probably would not be a problem for US West.

“As an industry, and as a company, we have embraced this kind of approach,” said Rob Stoddard, a company spokesman. “In many places in our country, there are no broadcast facilities nearby, but there usually is a cable system that can fill the breach.”