Photo: L.A. County Dept. of Public Works

Pavement that once was Vasquez Canyon Road in Santa Clarita was pulled up last week after a 400-foot section of the road was destroyed by a slow-moving landslide in November, officials said Monday.

While county officials were still unable to get in contact with the owners of the private property the road partially sits on as of Dec. 28, the pavement that was removed is “on the county’s right of way,” said Steven Frasher, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works.

Despite the road’s indefinite closure, made clear by fencing and visible signs, sections of pavement lifted as high as fifteen feet in the air have attracted skateboarders in the weeks following the landslide. However, this highly dangerous situation was not the primary reason for the decision to pull up the pavement.

“The skateboarders were trespassing into what was an increasingly dangerous area, as the soil continues to move,” Frasher said. “But the deciding factor was that if the hillside should continue to slide (during storm season) it would be exponentially harder to clean up.”

Based on their observations, county officials determined that the road has continued to move since the landslide first occurred on Nov. 20, though in much smaller increments than the initial shift.

“According to watching the pavement on the road, it definitely was continuing to shift because it exhibited different profiles every couple of days,” Frasher said. “It’s continually moved since it actually started back in November, but it’s just slower than it had been in that first dramatic day.”

Photo: L.A. County Dept. of Public Works

While it remains unknown how continued storms in Santa Clarita will affect the area, county officials are unable to begin necessary repairs or determine an estimated date for the road’s reopening.

“Until storm season is over and we see what happens with the hillside, it would be really impossible to safely get in there and try to do any road work on that,” Frasher said.

However, county officials began drilling and taking soil samples for testing on Dec. 15 to determine the cause of the landslide, which will help them try to predict how the area may continue to shift in the future.