Last week, experts with California’s state transportation department, Caltrans, looked up at a looming stretch of earth in Big Sur and thought, uh-oh. The land around a stretch of Highway 1, which winds along the dramatic Pacific Coast, was moving. A lot. The officials immediately barred locals from the area and pulled out the workers and equipment working to prevent a landslide. Just in time. Saturday night, millions of tons of rock and dirt poured down in four separate slides.

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