With wind chill readings bottoming out at minus-38 degrees Friday, the Shelbyville Fire Department and Street Department made changes to their normal routines.
“Everything went pretty smooth on our end,” said Shelbyville Fire Chief Brian Tackett at Tuesday’s final Board of Works meeting of 2022. “We had our normal call volume plus some alarms for water flow issues.”
With the dangerous wind chill temperatures, Tackett opted to limit the runs for the department’s truck carrying large quantities of water.
“We changed our staffing just a little bit, creating a chase truck in one of our pickup trucks so our fire truck that holds 1,000 gallons of water didn’t have to go out as often.”
One of the biggest issues with the wind chill temperatures were burst water pipes. Horseshoe Indianapolis casino, in Shelbyville, was one of several places forced to deal with ruptured water pipes.
“The casino had some issues with their sprinkler system,” said Tackett. “Only the west end is open. They had water dumping on several slot machines. It’s quite a mess going on out there.”
The fire department was not spared either.
“We had a busted pipe at station No. 2 that caused a little bit of damage,” said Tackett.
The street department gave in to the winter weather and cancelled Friday’s trash collection route at noon Thursday, according to street department director Doug Hunt.
“The weather was not as bad … there were no blizzard conditions,” said Hunt at Tuesday’s meeting. “The freeze was hard and we couldn’t get it (off the roads). The salt didn’t work.
“Once we plowed the snow off and the temperatures started coming back up, the salt worked.”
Temperatures are expected to climb into the 50s later this week.
“I appreciate everybody for being patient with us because of the holiday and the temperatures,” said Hunt. “We just had to wait a little bit before we could get it cleaned up.”
Get the most recent Shelby County Post headlines delivered to your email. Go to shelbycountypost.com and click on the free daily email signup link at the top of the page.
