August 10th, 2 weeks ago, a Derecho came through Grinnell, Iowa, the home of our company and many of our employees. Poweshiek County has been declared a disaster area. This storm covered approximately 770 miles in 14 hours with wind speeds around 100 miles per hour and caused a lot of damage to family, friends, and clients across the Midwest. We are fortunate not to have more damage than we do. We are even more fortunate to be part of a larger community that continues to help.
The storm hit on Monday morning, we lost all power and sent people home to assess their home’s damage. Our team stayed home on Tuesday, August 11th, because you can’t build signs without power and there was a lot of clean up to do, and there still is. We were back at it on Wednesday building signs and sending them on their way.
There are light poles flattened around the corner (see pics) and aluminum blown through the corn fields nearby, but our ImageFirst sign faired well, and it’s a big.
What’s that say? This aluminum and flex face sign (steel poles into the ground) is engineered to the wind speed of our area, like all the signage we create. We don’t over-engineer (drives price) or under-engineer (reduces quality). We produce signage based on the geographical wind speeds of the areas of the sign’s final home.
☝🏻 This sign took a 2×4 to the face (👇🏼 Tommy Boy anyone?).
The bright side? Only one face was damaged and it’s an illuminated flex face sign. Replacement cost is nearly 30% less than if this was an aluminum illuminated sign. Moral of the story, in our unofficial “Derecho sign testing of 2020” the flex face signs fared better than others (with what we’ve seen so far, locally).
Have Questions or Sign Damage? We can help! info@imagefirstsigns.com
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