Virginia Beach, Va. (WTKR) - After a massive fire destroyed a Chesapeake storage building, the City of Virginia Beach Public Works Department took action to help replace lost traffic signs.
The November 19th fire off Executive Blvd. destroyed the Chesapeake Public Works storage building.
That building stored more than 80% of Chesapeake's new sign inventory.
After the fire, Chesapeake Public Works rented some signs and also purchased a large number from Virginia Beach through the Regional Resource Sharing Program.
"We got an email from one of the gentlemen over in their traffic management shop asking if we could mass produce hundreds of signs that were lost in the fire," explained Frank Hickman with Virginia Beach Public Works.
Since Virginia Beach has a full-fledged sign-shop capable of making just about any sign, Chesapeake's standard order was no problem.
"There were stop signs, yield signs, speed limit signs," Hickman stated.
The Virginia Beach shop typically makes between 4,000 and 5,000 signs in a year, so Chesapeake's order of 500 was fairly large.
"We realized that it was a crucial need for them so we manned up over the holidays, got guys to work overtime and produced the order in about two weeks," Hickman told NewsChannel 3's Todd Corillo.
As far as the building is concerned, a spokeswoman for Chesapeake Public Works says there are no rebuilding plans as of yet.
Crews and the storeroom were moved to another location and temporary sheds have been ordered to help with storage.
