A large landslide has strewn debris over a stretch of California’s Highway 1. On the night of May 20, 2017, more than a million tons of rocks and dirt spilled over the roadway, according to the California Department of Transportation.

Fortunately, no one has yet been reported missing. Caltrans had been working for months to clear the span of Highway 1 of several smaller slides, even opening it certain times of the day to allow traffic to get through. But last week, crews pulled out of the area when more mud began to trickle down from the hills above.

“We’re glad nobody was there,” Cruz said. “It could have been really catastrophic if someone was around.”

Locals say the new avalanche of mud rivals a notorious slide in 1983 that covered Highway 1 to the north at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. That blast of debris took 14 months to clear.

The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, acquired images of the area on April 20 and May 22, 2017. The center image, acquired by a multispectral imager on the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellite, shows the same location as it appeared after a previous, smaller landslide this spring. 

“This is a large slide preceded by smaller slides, which is not uncommon,” said Thomas Stanley, a geologist and researcher for NASA, in an email. “Much of the California coastline is prone to collapse, so it’s fortunate that this landslide happened in an unpopulated location.” In 2015, the Monterey County Environmental Resource Policy Department rated parts of the nearby coast as highly susceptible to landslides.

The latest landslide covered roughly one-third of a mile of the scenic route in 35 to 40 feet (10 to 12 meters) of rubble. The highway will remain closed for the foreseeable future, according to Caltrans.

Another view from a little closer.