Sign vandals strike Libby
Snow mounds have shriveled and disappeared in the past week, along with several road signs.
Van Swearingen, Montana Department of Transportation supervisor for Libby field maintenance, suspects young people as the culprits.
“Unfortunately, sign vandalism is an ugly thing that happens particularly in the spring,” he said.
Signs on River Road, Pipe Creek Road, south of Libby, west of Libby and right in town have been pushed over or broken.
“They take their one-ton pickups,” Swearingen said, “and get up against them and the signs either push over or they break. Most of the time they push off.”
Swearingen can’t say for sure how many signs have been damaged because he hasn’t performed a full inventory yet but he is aware of about a dozen. He estimates that replacing vandalized signs so far this spring has cost $600 to $800, which doesn’t include the hours of work it will take to install them.
“We have to stop what we’re doing on our spring cleanup maintenance,” Swearingen said. “Digging the hole (for new signs) takes time, takes equipment and takes manpower.”
Missing signs aren’t just inconvenient and costly.
“It’s quite hazardous as people rely on signs to negotiate their driving,” Swearingen said, “especially when coming up to an intersection in the dark, and there’s no stop sign and you’re unfamiliar with the area.”
Capt. Roby Bowe of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office said he’s unaware of any car accidents that have occurred so far as a result of missing signs and that there are no leads yet as to who might be responsible for the damage.
Stop signs have been the biggest target, but signs indicating a curve, scenic turnout and Libby information have also been the latest “mortalities” in what Swearingen calls an annual spring sport for Libby teenagers.
Last week on Tuesday, law enforcers discovered that someone left broken road signs lying on a guardrail with the posts pointing into the lane near mile marker 25. Nearby other signs lay on the ground, including a Forest Service sign that was run over.
On Saturday, a sign was down on Highway 2 and Utah Avenue and on Monday, signs were left lying on Pipe Creek Road. On Tuesday Swearingen found three stop signs on Highway 37 knocked over.
Swearingen remembers a few cases in which spring road sign vandals were caught and prosecuted, one of which was a 17 or 18-year-old who was fined and sentenced to community service eight years ago.
“He did a tremendous amount of damage to county and state signs,” recalled Swearingen. “The judge took leniency on the young man, but he had to work some of his stupidity off, so to speak.”
Another teenager in the past was pulled over for an unrelated reason when the officer noticed he had five road signs and a chainsaw in the back of his pickup.