Recent Quakes: Related or Coincidence?

Lone Pine (myFOXla.com) - A moderate earthquake followed by dozens of aftershocks rattled the eastern Sierra Thursday but no damage or injuries were reported.

The magnitude-5.0 temblor struck at 3:01 a.m. with an epicenter about 18 miles southeast of the Owens Valley town of Lone Pine.

More than four dozen smaller aftershocks including at least five that registered at magnitude-3.5 followed over the next five hours.

The quakes hit a rural area near Sequoia National Park about 180 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

Inyo County sheriff's dispatcher Faith Felton said she felt a slight tremor during the strongest quake.

Seismologist Susan Hough of the U.S. Geological Survey said the energetic aftershocks did not appear to be unusual.

"It looks to me to be a generic aftershock series," she said.

The seismic activity in the eastern Sierra came after powerful back-to-back earthquakes in Indonesia and the South Pacific earlier this week.

Those quakes were almost certainly unrelated to the California activity because they occurred days apart and over long distances, Hough said.

The last destructive quake to hit the Lone Pine area came in 1872, when a temblor similar in size to the 1906 San Francisco quake killed about 30 people and leveled nearly all buildings.