The landslide is still moving as of Friday afternoon and is continuing to push sections of the road higher.

“You can see and hear bits of it cracking,” said Steven Frasher, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works.

Geologists with L.A. County are currently unable to take samples and examine the hill for the cause of the movement, as the land is private property and the owner has not been notified of the landslide.

“The failure of the hillside is actually quite far back, even further back than we can see,” said Frasher. “But it’s very limited, what we can do.”

As for the cause of the landslide, county officials have no answers.

“Everything is being looked into because nothing is obvious,” Frasher said. “There’s no indication that seismic activity had anything to do with it.”

There have been no freezing of the ground, recent storms, or seismic activity that county geologists are aware of.

Frasher said that a potential idea concerning how the landslide occurred is that water from the Oct. 15 storm may have seeped into the ground and weakened the soil, but that there has been no outward indication that the storm caused the landslide, meaning that there is no way of confirming this theory.

Frasher said that there are no easily found reasons for an event like this to happen.

“It’s a bit of a mystery,” he said.

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And while the ground is still unstable, there is a limit to what can be done.

“With the road is still moving, there’s a limit to what we can do in terms of road mitigation,” said Frasher. “It would be fruitless and potentially dangerous until the geologic situation stabilizes.”

But according to Frasher, the closure is not something that will be fixed quickly.

“Quite obviously, this is not something that will be corrected in a short period of time,” he said. “Suffice to say, this (road) will not be reopened soon.”

Below is a video showing the extent of the damage:

A California Highway Patrol officer on the scene remarked that the road closure could be an inconvenience for first responders.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “it’s a really good shortcut for emergency responders.”

Crews from Southern California Edison have shut off the power lines that run along the canyon, and have begun work taking down the wires that stretch between them, as several of the power poles lining the road have been affected by the damage.

The first reports of the incident came at around noon on Thursday.

“At first it was reported to us as (the road) heaving more than a foot, which sounded quite extraordinary,” Frasher. “When our crews got up here, not only was it one to two feet, but it was continuing to move, and by 3:30 p.m., it was over four feet.”

But local resident J Rhodes, who travels the road daily, said that the signs of damage have been present since at least Wednesday.

“I came through on Thursday morning and it was even worse,” said Rhodes. “It was still a bit driveable 24 hours ago, and now this.”