It’s been a challenging couple of years from one of the nation’s most iconic roadways. The Pacific Coast Highway has faced natural diasasters and infrastructure issues recently, and that was before the recent array of wildfires that devastated the state. Among the effects of the Palisades fire was damage to the Pacific Coast Highway itself — damage that repair crews recently completed work on, just in time for the holiday weekend.
As NPR’s Liz Baker reports, local residents were happy to see the highway re-opened. Mailbu resident and surfer Milton Willis opted for a more ecstatic reaction, telling NPR, “Hallelujah, Memorial Day weekend and they opened up the road!” The effects of the road closure have been experienced by plenty of surfers in the area. One of them, Maria Shen, told NPR that prime surfing days were now attracting dozens of surfers, as opposed to “a hundred” in busier times.
According to NPR’s reporting, 60% of the debris that had made this stretch of the PCH impassable has now been removed. There’s still more work to do; as Karen Garcia and Hannah Fry reported at the Los Angeles Times, the speed limit on the re-opened stretch of highway is currently 25 miles per hour.
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Test results had some alarming findingsMalibu’s mayor, Marianne Riggins, told the Los Angeles Times that more work remained. “While significant challenges remain, this development helps restore limited access for residents and travelers along the coast,” Riggins said. It’s not a full restoration of service, but it is a big step forward
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