News

A sign professional could be the first person to observe and warn of a sign’s imminent or likely failure.

The headlines could have been, “Through the plumes of dust… Four people are confirmed dead, and 31 injured.” That is, if Michael Snow had not gone the extra mile to diagnose and report a large sign’s structural flaws.

Michael Snow, co-founder with his wife, Gwen, of Innovative Sign Systems in Vista, CA, received an RFP from a potential customer in Huntington Beach. Innovative Sign Systems was asked to quote on the removal and replacement of ten 15’x15′ flex face sign cabinets. The challenge with this project was that the freeway now infringed on the property.

“This is a pretty big project, so we had to survey the location and have a couple of swing stage companies come out and also survey to provide estimates,” explained Michael.

Michael’s team was told they could ignore one sign, a very large flex face structure that the client wanted to keep. While conducting their surveys, however, they noticed an urgent issue with that particular sign. The anchors had pulled out of the concrete and half the sign was swaying as much as two inches, away from the building, in a light breeze. (See dramatic video). As can be seen in the photos below, the sign is essentially over a busy freeway.

Michael explained that their next step was to raise the issue with the local management team. “They thanked us, but no action was taken that we were aware of.”

Michael decided to get a professional engineer involved. He called YJ Engineering in Santa Clarita, CA. “I spoke to YJ about our findings and shared with them our concerns, pictures, and videos. They were alarmed the sign could come down with seismic activity measuring just 2.0 on the Richter Scale or with a heavy wind!”

In California, seismic activity is a constant occurrence. At the time of this writing, over the past 24 hours, California had 57 quakes of magnitudes up to 2.7:
7 quakes above magnitude 2.0, and 50 quakes below magnitude 2 that people normally don’t feel.

“These are some of the photos I had documenting the issue. You will see the anchors pulled and concrete failures with abundant cracking and spalling. I believe the initial installation was at fault, there are exposed anchors, open anchor points that were never used, and the anchors themselves were too high or just did not hit solid concrete.”

Michael sent the information to the owner with a short-term remediation proposal while an engineering team could conduct a formal survey. Once the findings were in writing, the owners gave the job for an emergency freeway lane closure and immediate sign removal to the sign company that Innovative Sign Systems was bidding against.

“The company did a good job, but we were not offered the opportunity to bid on the removal. We gave our time and did the work as sign professionals, likely saving people from injury or worse. It was the right thing to do.”

We at Sign Biz, Inc. know that there are many unsung heroes in the sign industry. Michael Snow and his team are certainly to be counted among them. This is just one real-life example of how sign professionals contribute, often quietly, to the betterment of our communities. These are real Sign Heroes.