High tides batter Malibu coast, undermine PCH east of Duke's Play

More high tides Monday morning and Tuesday will continue to flood beaches and possibly cause erosion problems below Pacific Coast Highway.

Over the weekend in the eastern Malibu burn area, the worst damage was waves that took out a cliff about two blocks east of Duke's Restaurant, right below PCH.

A waterline broke Saturday night, and now there's a 50-foot-long stretch of pavement basically hanging in air, about 40 feet above the churning surf. Caltrans engineers estimated about 50 linear feet of damage along the highway.

The Paradise Cove Pier partially collapsed Friday. No update on that situation over the weekend.

Just west of Point Dume, about 400 feet of beach washed out from the Sunset Restaurant toward Zuma Creek over the weekend. About half of Zuma Beach has now washed away.

The construction of emergency extensions for the rock revetment to protect Westward Beach Road may need to go further up the road toward Zuma Creek.

Out on Zuma Beach, the new one-mile-long lagoon continues to fill up with the daily high tide and then mostly drain out in the afternoon.

Saturday morning, the county put whitewater rescue crews at the lagoon's drain, where a river had opened up draining the beach near Guernsey Avenue, in case one of the little kids playing in the lagoon got washed out to sea.

High tides again Monday morning showed that the big waves seem to have backed off Sunday.

We don't have any update on the situation at La Chusa Beach. The 31 houses there remain under red flag evacuation warnings that were supposed to expire after five weeks — that would be Monday morning.

No word on any progress. Reports of emergency home protection work being done up and down the coast are really hard for us to get. We don't have helicopters to look at the damage, or drones either.

The City Council has a meeting scheduled Monday night, and there likely will be an official update on the current status of the Malibu waterfront.