{"id":32767,"date":"2026-01-29T17:31:54","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T22:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/?p=32767"},"modified":"2026-01-29T17:31:55","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T22:31:55","slug":"decaturs-winter-storm-battle-slowing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/29\/decaturs-winter-storm-battle-slowing\/","title":{"rendered":"Decatur’s winter storm battle slowing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By BOB SHRALUKA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

WZBD.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had lots of people involved,\u201d Matt Schultz said Wednesday of the City of Decatur’s response to the first major winter storm of 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of Wednesday afternoon, crews were mainly focusing on \u201cmaintenance,\u201d such as moving snow from downtown to the First St. parking lot, reworking some city streets on which drifting was occurring, salting, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Main break Elm & 11th<\/sup>\u00a0streets (City of Decatur photo)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Four plows soon got on the main streets and \u201cworked on the main streets all day,\u201d Schultz explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe decided to keep the main streets open, get them passable,” Rickord noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then around 9 p.m., after some of the workers got some rest, the focus shifted to side streets and residential areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, in the midst of it all, a water main broke at 11th and Elm streets on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only were some employees forced to deal with that in bitter cold conditions, \u201cbut that’s our plow guys,\u201d the mayor said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn’t think they could, but they did,\u201d Rickord said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By BOB SHRALUKA WZBD.com \u201cWe had lots of people involved,\u201d Matt Schultz said Wednesday of the City of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32770,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[14,15,21],"class_list":["post-32767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-decatur","tag-featured","tag-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wzbd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/image0-2026-01-29T173056.350-rotated.jpeg?fit=1512%2C2016&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32767"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32771,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32767\/revisions\/32771"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}