Sign of the times: Hurricane Matthew’s traffic sign damage still being tallied

Traffic signs bent into contorted shapes by the howling winds of Hurricane Matthew could remain a common sight along roadways in Beaufort County.

There may be 100 to 150 signs on Hilton Head Island featuring street names that will need some kind of repair, according to public works, traffic and transportation engineer Darrin Shoemaker.

“We’ve experienced quite a bit of damage to our ground-mounted street name signs,” Shoemaker said. “We have quite a number of street name signs that were either destroyed or damaged.”

“We have a large number of those,” he said. “If anything, we need a sign post.”

Shoemaker said repairing stop signs, yield signs and directional signs were a higher priority. But he said very few of those signs were damaged so badly that they will need to be immediately replaced.

Shoemaker says repairing street name signs will be a lower priority as the town deals with the storm cleanup.

“We have not turned our attention to those lower-priority signs while we’re still trying to manage debris,” he said.

Shoemaker said the storm also damaged a slight majority of the town’s two-dozen traffic lights.

“It was the kind of damage we were able to quickly repair,” Shoemaker said.

Most of that repair work was handled before the island was reopened to residents. Six traffic lights were without power when the island was reopened, but those lights were quickly put back on line as residents returned.

“We were fortunate in that was all of the signal damage that we had,” Shoemaker said.

Shoemaker said the total damage to the town’s traffic lights could cost around $5,000 or less.

Beaufort County traffic engineer Colin Kinton said the county is still surveying signs damaged on county roads.

“We’re still collecting that data at this time,” he said. “Our sign shop (crew) is replacing signs on county routes as necessary.”

He couldn’t say which side of the Broad River saw more damage to road signs.

Beaufort city manager Bill Prokop said they haven’t “even looked that yet.”

“We’ve got enough problems with trees, etcetera,” he said.

Daniel Salazar: dsalazar@wichitaeagle.com, @imdanielsalazar

This story was originally published October 20, 2016 at 5:12 PM with the headline "Sign of the times: Hurricane Matthew’s traffic sign damage still being tallied."