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Workers inspect landslide buckled road in California V19282

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Workers inspect landslide buckled road in California

A portion of Vasquez Canyon Road north of Santa Clarita is lifted more than 15 feet as an adjacent hillside collapses in a slow landslide "slump" event. Vasquez Canyon has long been known as a geologically unstable area, with a somewhat surreal landscape of cliffs, sparse vegetation and intersting steep hillsides composed of exposed chalk layers and other soft soil strata.

This slide is probably the result of the recent heavy thunderstorms which pounded the area back in September (9-9-2015) and October (10-14-2015). Those storms dropped locally heavy rain (perhaps 1 or more inches per event) in areas just north of Santa Clarita. That rainwater would have made the soil heavier, and may have taken some time to percolate down through the soft, extensively dried soil to reach more compact earth or perhaps a clay layer below road level where it eventually reduced soil cohesion to the point that it could no longer support the steep hillside. As the hillside sank into the softened earth below, it mushroomed outward away from the hill, forcing the road up and outward from below.

A view of the area in Google Earth (images dated April 11, 2015) shows that this hillside was cut very steeply, and was also terraced about half-way up, probably to control erosion and catch falling debris. Near the top, evidence of an older, smaller slide/slump event could be seen, as well as some evidence that an upper jagged part of the hillside to east had already started to fracture and peel away.

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