By BOB SHRALUKA
WZBD.com
“We had lots of people involved,” Matt Schultz said Wednesday of the City of Decatur’s response to the first major winter storm of 2026.
Preparations began as early as last Friday with pretreatment of city streets, then shifted to high gear early Sunday morning, according to the city’s street/sanitation superintendent.
As of Wednesday afternoon, crews were mainly focusing on “maintenance,” such as moving snow from downtown to the First St. parking lot, reworking some city streets on which drifting was occurring, salting, etc.
Mayor Dan Rickord said he and some city employees got together with police, fire, Emergency Management Agency, and other reps around 5:30 a.m. Sunday to map out plans.
Four plows soon got on the main streets and “worked on the main streets all day,” Schultz explained.
“We decided to keep the main streets open, get them passable,” Rickord noted.
Then around 9 p.m., after some of the workers got some rest, the focus shifted to side streets and residential areas.
Of course, in the midst of it all, a water main broke at 11th and Elm streets on Sunday.
Not only were some employees forced to deal with that in bitter cold conditions, “but that’s our plow guys,” the mayor said.
Something of a pleasant surprise came Monday mornbing when city crews, despite the weather battle, were able to make that day’s regular trash run.
“I didn’t think they could, but they did,” Rickord said.
At the height of the response, eight employees were operating plows (some of which were city pickup trucks with plows attached), according to Schultz. Two of them were working on alleys.
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