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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
LAKE PILLSBURY – A 4.8 quake that shook residents of the Lake Pillsbury area awake early Wednesday morning was the area's largest quake since 1977, according to a seismologist.
The earthquake was recorded at 1:42 a.m. by the U.S. Geological Survey.
The series of almost 40 aftershocks that followed the quake included a sizable 3.3 magnitude temblor that occurred at 8:52 p.m. Wednesday.
David Oppenheimer, a seismologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, said the last time there was an earthquake above magnitude 4.5 in the Lake Pillsbury area was Nov. 22, 1977.
That quake, he said, happened nine miles southwest of the lake, rather than nine miles west northwest, the area where Wednesday's quake was centered.
Area residents said they definitely felt it when it happened.
“It just about knocked us out of bed,” said Soda Creek Store owner Nick Uram.
Despite the early morning shaker's magnitude, Uram said items weren't knocked off the shelves at his store, although his home on Lake Pillsbury Ranch was shaken up “pretty good.”
No one coming into his store Wednesday reported any damage, Uram said.
Dixie Offt of Lake Pillsbury Resort & Marina said the resort's full-time caretaker was awakened moments before the quake by his cat.
The caretaker checked the water lines, cabins and marina for the resort – which will open for the season on Memorial Day – and found everything to be all right, said Offt. “We sustained no damage.”
As for the lake and its dams, they also escaped damage, according to David Eisenhauer, a spokesman for Pacific Gas & Electric, which oversees Lake Pillsbury.
As soon as the earthquake occurred, Eisenhauer said, PG&E staff inspected both Cape Horn and Scotts dams and found no problems.
“We're keeping a close eye on all of our facilities up there, but so far everything is looking sturdy,” said Eisenhauer.
Oppenheimer said there is a “persistent band of seismicity” that goes through Lake Pillsbury.
“It's a bit unusual to see behavior like what's happened with this earthquake,” he said.
Particularly unusual, said Oppenheimer, was the quake's aftershock sequence, with nearly 40 smaller quakes occurring throughout the day.
“We don't know exactly why some earthquakes have robust aftershock sequences and others don't,” he said.
An earthquake's behavior is influenced by a variety of factors, said Oppenheimer, including rock type or fluid pressure in the fault zone.
Serpentine, a common rock found in the state's coastal ranges, tends to be associated with faults that creep a lot and have larges number of small earthquakes, said Oppenheimer. “So maybe there's some serpentine in this fault zone.”
Oppenheimer explained that strain in the earth's crush is released through the state's larger faults – such as the San Andreas and Calaveras. The larger faults account for up to 90 percent of overall plate motion. Oppenheimer said the size of an earthquake tends to correlate to the total length of the fault.
Along with those major quakes, there are secondary and tertiary faults, and there are enough of them that seismologists don't even know where they all are because the smaller faults don't break through to the surface.
Such is the case with the fault along which Wednesday's quake took place. There are no mapped faults for the quake's epicenter, Oppenheimer said. “We don't know about these faults until they pop off.”
It's also hard to guess just how big of a quake could ultimately occur there, although this week's quake could be at the fault's upper limits, he added.
“It's not a major player in releasing strain in California,” Oppenheimer said. “Those are the ones that do come to the surface, like the San Andreas fault.”
There are other named faults in that area, said Oppenheimer, such as the Maacama fault. As to concerns about the aftershocks triggering a quake from that fault, Oppenheimer said the probability is “exceedingly low.”
For people worrying about “the big one,” Oppenheimer says it's doubtful that it would occur on the unnamed fault.
“The big one, if you're a seismologist, is a repeat of the 1906 earthquake,” he said, referring to the massive 7.8 earthquake that occurred along the San Andreas fault near San Francisco 101 years ago Wednesday.
Oppenheimer said scientists are learning all the time about the state's seismicity.
“We don't have a very complete picture of earthquake activity in California,” he said. Monitoring only began in the 1930s, reaching current standards in the 1970s.
Seismic activity isn't organized, he said, with some faults not showing activity for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years.
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LAKEPORT – Will BoardStock take place in Lakeport this September? The question was opened once more at Tuesday night's City Council meeting, but the event organizer says he now has an offer from Konocti Vista Casino to host the event.
Rob Stimmel of BoardStock Promotions has been trying to find a new home for his event since mid-February, when Konocti Harbor Resort & Spa said the event wouldn't be welcomed back for a third year.
Stimmel said the reason cited at the time was a concern about the resort losing its alcohol license, an issue that Stimmel maintains is less about his event and more about the resort's security operations.
Not long after that decision, Stimmel and Ron Campos of Campos Casuals approached the City of Lakeport to ask that BoardStock be hosted there.
Talks continued for about a month before the City Council voted on March 20 to decline hosting the August event.
Stimmel went back to the council Tuesday to ask them to reconsider. The council voted to do just that, and to have a May 1 public hearing. But the council once again voiced numerous concerns about BoardStock, and showed little enthusiasm about seeing the event come to town.
“It wasn't bad but it wasn't good,” said Stimmel Wednesday of the previous night's meeting.
Stimmel said he had expected more of a public workshop at Tuesday's meeting. Instead, the council limited discussion to its members, setting the public meeting for another two weeks out.
The original August dates for the event aren't workable now, said Stimmel, and he's instead asking the city to consider the third or fourth weekend of September. That date change already has lost him some event sponsors, he said.
“I'm really at a point of critical mass,” Stimmel said. “I have to make a decision really quick about where I'm going to go and what I'm going to do.”
Enter Konocti Vista. Stimmel said he's been talking with the casino for several weeks about holding the event there.
Having the event go to Konocti Vista was a concern Mayor Roy Parmentier voiced at Tuesday night's meeting.
If BoardStock was based in Lakeport, said Parmentier, they could require Stimmel to pay upfront for police and emergency services. That wouldn't be possible if it went somewhere else nearby, he said.
That may well be what ends up happening with BoardStock, said Stimmel.
On Wednesday, Stimmel said Konocti Vista “handed me a contract today.”
The casino, he said, is asking for a few stipulations, one of them being that if they reach an agreement to host the event, that Stimmel must commit to stay there and not to pull out should the city decide to welcome him.
“They pretty well want me locked in,” Stimmel said, on either of the September weekends he's already suggesting.
Stimmel said he's going to go over the Konocti Vista contract with his attorney before making any decision.
Where is he inclined to go? Stimmel isn't sure.
“I honestly don't know what I'm going to do,” said Stimmel, noting there are benefits for both locations.
While downtown Lakeport would look great on television, the lake near Konocti Vista might end up being better for event competitors, Stimmel said.
“If my attorney tells me that this is all good and I should go forward with the deal with Konocti Vista, I would probably do that,” he said.
Stimmel said he's still considering whether to continue discussions with Lakeport's city staff and council.
“I can't really afford to wait another two weeks and then have the council vote it down again,” Stimmel said.
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THIS STORY HAS BEEN UPDATED.
LAKEPORT – A week after his employment ended with the Lake County Sheriff's Office, a former deputy was arrested on felony charges of having sex with an underage girl and a misdemeanor charge involving a second minor female.
Derik Navarro, 35, of Kelseyville, faces a total of 18 felony counts and two misdemeanor counts of criminal wrongdoing, according to District Attorney Jon Hopkins.
In brief statements released Wednesday, Hopkins and Sheriff Rod Mitchell reported that Navarro had just been arrested that morning on charges of committing lewd and lascivious acts with a minor, sodomy with a minor and having sex with a minor under age 16.
Hopkins said the arrest followed a lengthy investigation by his office into allegations of sexual misconduct while Navarro was still a deputy sheriff.
Mitchell reported that his command staff received information on Jan. 23 that led to an internal investigation into “allegations of misconduct” by Navarro.
“The matter was of such consequence that we asked Lake County District Attorney investigators to conduct a separate and independent criminal investigation,” Mitchell stated.
Navarro was placed on administrative leave on Jan. 23, said Mitchell, pending the internal investigation's outcome.
The majority of the charges against Navarro involve a female juvenile, said Hopkins. Navarro is alleged to have had a sexual relationship with the 14-year-old girl from May 2005 through May 2006, after she had turned 15.
The complaint against Navarro also includes one misdemeanor charge stemming from his alleged involvement with a second female juvenile, Hopkins reported.
None of the alleged crimes took place while Navarro was on duty as a sheriff's deputy, Mitchell said.
Navarro joined LCSO in December 2002. Last week, on April 11, Navarro's employment with LCSO ended, Mitchell reported.
Chief DA Investigator Michael Clements arrested Navarro Wednesday on a felony arrest warrant issued by Superior Court Judge Richard Martin.
Navarro was booked into the Lake County Jail, with bail set at $20,000. A court appearance has been scheduled for April 20.
Mitchell thanked the District Attorney's Office for taking the lead in the investigation. “The DA's investigators' willingness to handle the criminal investigation into this matter allowed my staff to promptly focus on their administrative duties,” he said.
Mitchell said his department would release no other information on the matter. Instead, he deferred any other comment on the case to the District Attorney's Office, saying that state law prohibits him from “disclosing details of matters pertaining to personnel investigations and/or employee discipline.”
In an unusual footnote, last year Navarro was honored by the Lake Family Resource Center as Law Enforcement Officer of the Year for his work on domestic violence cases.
Hopkins asks anyone with information about the case to contact Chief DA Investigator Michael Clements or Deputy District Attorney John R. DeChaine, 263-2251.
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- Written by: Lake County News Reports
LAKE PILLSBURY – On the 101st anniversary of the San Francisco Earthquake, a 4.8 quake shook the Lake Pillsbury area.
The quake hit at 1:42 a.m. on Wednesday morning with 17 aftershocks ranging up to 2.0 as of 6:45 a.m., according to the US Geological Survey.
Nine more aftershocks – bringing the total to 26 – hit throughout the early afternoon, the USGS reported.
Originally, USGS had ranked the quake as a 5.0, but scaled it back to a 4.8 by mid-morning.
The epicenter of the quake occurred in the increasing seismic area of between the Maacama fault zone and the Bartlett Springs fault 9 miles west of Lake Pillsbury in Northern Lake County.
The depth of the temblor was 3.8 miles.
Lake County News reported earlier this week that a 3.1 quake had hit the Pillsbury area Sunday morning, near the epicenter of Wednesday's quake.
Lake and Mendocino county residents from Covelo to Ft. Bragg, Clear Lake Oaks to Cloverdale reported feeling a light to moderate shaking.
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