West Portal construction camp of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, where 300 city employees were snowbound by a High Sierra storm. Attempts were being made to deliver food supplies from this camp to two other construction camps, each housing 150 employees. A caterpillar tractor pulling a heavy sled was trying to cross the deep piled snow drifts separating the camps on February 26, 1938. At Bishop, in the Owens Valley, department trucks loaded with ten tons of food and supplies were waiting for a break in the storm to reach West Portal, 60 miles distant. A number of workers on the city's Mono Craters tunnel project lived with their families at June Lake, where a huge avalanche buried mountain cabins and took two lives. It was reported to water and power officials in Los Angeles that the employees at all northern locations were in no immediate danger.
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