Repairs underway for street signs still missing in Cape Coral after Ian

Signs on busy intersections like Skyline Boulevard and Veterans Memorial Parkway remain missing and unrepaired after Hurricane Ian.

It’s a problem Cape Coral resident Jenny Darling came to WINK News with two weeks ago.

Since then, she said nothing had changed.

“Nothing, and I’ve counted more signs, signs that I wasn’t already aware of,” she said. “So, I keep finding more. I’ve counted at least 17.”

But on Wednesday, the city of Cape Coral finally had answers to give.

According to the city’s Public Works Department, those overhead signs and more are expected to be repaired by Dec.

This after more than 4,100 other signs had been replaced or straightened so far this year.

“Just in time for tourist season, because that’s when the traffic, you know, it’s already crazy, and it’s going to get even crazier,” said Darling.

More hectic with more cars on the roads and people who are less familiar with the names of these streets.

It poses a risk for drivers, that’s why Darling hopes they’ll be done sooner rather than later.

“I do know that recovering from hurricanes takes time I just hope, we can’t really undo what’s already happened,” she said. “I hope that maybe they can learn from this. God forbid there is another hurricane and maybe next time they can do a better job.”

Cape Coral Mayor John Gunter recognized the need to learn from this experience at Wednesday’s morning meeting.

As most repairs did not start until nearly a year after Ian, having waited for federal and state dollars to help pay for them.

“Hopefully, we’ve learned a lesson here,” he said. “Do you know if we have a policy for the future, as far as how we’re going to address this? Because it’s not the question of if, it’s a question of when we’ll be hit with another type of storm, where we may have sign damage. I don’t want to repeat the failures that we kind of did in this situation, a lot of it wasn’t our own failures.”

The plan for now is to keep discussions open for ways the city can improve its preparedness to quickly and efficiently repair its street signs after a storm.

The City of Cape Coral and Lee County Government said repairs for the remaining missing signs at street signals, neighborhoods and more, are already underway. All are expected to be complete by Dec.