Bob Foos
As the weekend storm approached, the Webb City Public Works crews prepared for the worst while hoping the forecasts were wrong.
Snowplows were installed. Salt trucks and salt bunkers were filled.
In writing his regular report in advance of the City Council meeting Monday (which was called off), City Administrator Carl Francis said it would be fine with him if all the preparation wound up being a dry run.
Instead, Webb City received an official 7 inches of snow from Saturday until the skies cleared Sunday afternoon.
Some areas were pretreated, even though the extreme cold was expected to weaken the pretreatment’s effectiveness.
All crews were called in to work 12-hour shifts, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Salt was applied on early snowplow runs. And then there were follow-up runs – on almost all the streets.
“We received one complaint,” Francis says, because a driver forgot to turn south on a portion of College Street. “We definitely missed it but went back and got it.”
Except for that, he says, “I think the staff did a great job of working through it.”
Getting the worst of the storm, though, was the wastewater crew, which – instead of being in a heated truck – had to be out in the frigid weather repairing a sewer line that backed up at Broadway and Crow Street.
Francis says it was right in the middle of the storm and such a difficult job that Joplin had to be called to help.