Courtesy Diana Durre was killed after a Taco Bell sign fell on the pickup she was in.

Courtesy Emergency workers worked to remove Mark and Dianna Durre from the pickup.

Courtesy The pole holding up the sign came loose from the base about 15-feet off the ground.

Photo by Brian Henn A photo of a weld on the Holiday Inn Express high rise sign taken by Brian Henn of Love Signs in Grand Island.

Photo by Brian Henn The welds on the Holiday Inn sign were bad enough that Henn said they had to dismantle the sign to repair it.

Courtesy The North Platte Motel 6 high rise sign toppled onto a bus on March 11, 1986, caused no injuries but the $170,000 custom bus was declared a total loss.

There has been a lot of speculation on what caused a 65-foot high-rise Taco Bell sign to fall April 3, killing a Chambers Nebraska woman, but no definitive cause.

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Jay Muller, from CBS Sign Company in Gretna, said we would not likely know until insurance company investigators and engineers made a determination.

CBS Sign is a division of Tri City Signs.

Sign companies are basically unregulated, Muller said. He said each company has to get a permit from a city before installing a sign but some municipal codes are weak.

Besides that, most building inspectors don’t inspect the welds as the signs are constructed.

“I’ve never met a building inspector yet who wanted to ride a bucket up 65-feet to inspect a weld,” said Brian Henn of Love Signs, Grand Island

Muller said a section of the pipe could have been bad, the steel could have cracked, the base could have cracked, a weld could have cracked or any number of other causes. He said it could take some time before an investigation is completed.

The North Platte police are not investigating it, according to Lt. Mike Swain. He said they have gathered information and will pass it along to insurance accident investigators if asked but there was nothing criminal to investigate.

“Our role was limited to making sure people stayed back and safe and allowed the paramedics to do their job,” Swain said. “It’s not like we’re going to x-ray the pipe or something. That’s not what we do.”

Bill Negley, from Custom Craft Signs, said signs like the Taco Bell sign need maintenance like a car to insure that all the parts are working properly. He said the cause of the freak accident that killed Diane Durre would likely be for a number of reasons.

Even though no one knows exactly what caused the sign to fall, all agreed it was a shocking and terrible tragedy.

And Muller said he thinks the incident will change everyone’s thoughts in the sign business in Nebraska.

The accident

Mark and Diana Durre, both 49, left their home in Chambers Friday morning and drove to North Platte.

They made the 3:32 trip with two dogs – a female Yorkie who was pregnant and a male Norich Terrier. The plan was to meet Nancy and Doran Boston of Casper, Wyo.

The Bostons had met the Durres on the Internet and were buying the Terrier. When they made plans, they decided to meet and exchange the dog underneath the giant Taco Bell sign in North Platte.

After driving 186 miles and by some twist of fate, the Durres parked in the exact spot where the sign would fall only minutes later.

Without warning, it fell.

The pickup was parked in the rear parking lot of a Conoco service station/Taco Bell restaurant at the intersection of Interstate 80 and Hwy. 83.

The pole broke at a welded joint about 15-feet above the ground.

The top of the sign fell directly on top of the couple’s quad-cab pickup.

The tragedy occurred about 12:30 p.m.

Mark Durre suffered a crushed finger but remained conscious.

Diane Durre was stunned momentarily but regained consciousness, according to Chief Deputy Lincoln County Attorney Todd Engleman. She died at the scene before the ambulances arrived.

“It was a one-in-a-million freak accident,” Engleman said.

Police officers at the scene said had the car been either forward three feet or backward three feet the outcome could have been completely different, that neither might have been injured.

The dogs were in the back seat and were uninjured, Engleman said. They were taken to the North Platte Animal Shelter.

Animal control officer John Pettit said a veterinarian checked the dogs and they checked out fine.

Kerrie Kelsey, Shelter Director, took the pregnant Yorkie home with her that night. She said the incident caused the Yorkie to go into labor and that she stayed with the Yorkie from 5:30 p.m. until about 2 a.m.

The Yorkie had six puppies, Kelsey said.

Friends of the Durres took the Yorkie and the puppies back to Chambers the next day, Kelsey said.

The Bostons took the Terrier to Casper the next day too.

The National Weather Center Office in North Platte recorded wind speeds of 30-35 miles an hour at the time at the North Platte Regional Airport, with an occasional gust of 40 miles an hour.

Negley said high rise signs of this type were engineered to withstand straight winds of up to 110 mph. A flexible faced sign was designed to bend and flex with increased winds.

It’s that reason that leads sign experts to believe the joints may have been weakened or a crack developed or some other cause was a contributing factor.

The Bostons arrived at Taco Bell not long after the sign landed on the Durres’ pickup. They watched helplessly as two front-end loaders lifted the sign and paramedics used the Jaws of Life to get to the Durres.

Mike Durre, Mark’s brother, told the Bulletin Tuesday that Mark had to have his finger amputated. He said his brother was in some physical pain from the from the finger and the other bumps and bruises he received when the sign came crashing down.

“But his biggest pain is emotional,” Mike Durre said. “He lost his loving wife.”

Mike Durre, speaking from Biglins Mortuary in O’Neill, said the entire family was still in shock. He said Diana Durre’s funeral and burial was Wednesday.

Mike Durre thanked North Platte residents for caring.

“The whole community of North Platte seemed to reach out and help us while we were there,” Durre said. “The hospital staff was just amazing.”

Mike Durre said they intended to write a letter to the community showing their gratitude.

Signs topple

There is no official record for falling signs. Each community keeps it’s own statistics if they keep any at all.

Most signs don’t fall but, occasionally, a few do.

Sign companies the Bulletin spoke to could not provide any statistics but, with their help, we were able to compile at least a partial list of signs that fell in our area in the last 10 years:

• Arbys in Grand Island – 85’ high rise

• Wendys in Lexington – 75’ high rise

• Super 8 in Ogallala – 60’ high rise

• Days Inn in McCook – unknown size

• Comfort Inn in Hastings – 50’ high rise

• Ford Trucks in Grand Island – 60’ high rise

The Taco Bell sign is not even the first high rise sign to fall in North Platte.

On March 11, 1988, a $170,000 tour bus bound for Honolulu Hawaii, was crushed by a 100-foot Motel 6 high-rise sign. The bus was being transported to Oakland Calif., where it was to be shipped by boat to its final destination.

The sign broke about 15 to 17-feet above the ground and fell in the middle of the bus. No one was inside and there were no injuries. The sign fell after a winter snow storm moved through the area.

That sign was designed and installed by Acme Wiley, an Illinois company no longer in business.

In the late 1990s, an unknown size high-rise Super 8 sign toppled over here.

The signs are designed to known loads and stresses but are under stress 24-hours a day, Negley said.

Often, the company that installs the sign isn’t the same one who performs maintenance on it.

The Taco Bell sign was installed and built in 1999 by the Tri City Sign Company of Grand Island. It cost $17,000, according to the sign permit.

The owner of the sign and the Taco Bell restaurant and Conoco convenience store is North Platte businessman Mark Wilkinson, who declined to comment for this story.

Tim Markezee, the owner of Tri City Signs, said his company built the sign 10 years ago but did not have the maintenance contract on it.

“We haven’t touched or even seen that sign for 10 years,” Markezee said. He said he thought Condon Signs of North Platte, recently purchased by Love Signs of Grand Island, performed maintenance on the sign.

Brian Henn of Love Signs and Condon Signs, said he wasn’t sure what caused the sign to fall.

Henn said they only performed lighting maintenance on the sign. But he said they recently performed maintenance on a similar sign last August and found faulty welding.

Henn said the sign, at Wilkinson’s Holiday Inn Express, had to be repaired. Both high rise signs were erected around the same time by Tri City Signs, according to city permits.

Markezee denied there was a faulty weld on any of his signs. He said he always used certified welders.

Muller said businesses change hands and sometimes put a new sign face on a pole it is not designed for.

Muller said he suspected it could be a bad pipe. But he said the exact answers will only come after the insurance companies investigate it.

Muller said signs are constructed along the Gulf Coast and are built to withstand hurricane force winds and still get blown down. He estimated less than one percent of signs ever topple over.

This article was first published April 8 in the Bulletin's print edition.