This week’s extreme cold and windy conditions led to several changes across the area from school closings to cancelled activities, everyone was working to try and keep as many people indoors as possible.

The City of Perry made some changes as well to try and keep employees safe.

City Administrator Butch Niebuhr says typically, there are two people on the garbage and recycling trucks who switch off daily or weekly with one in the truck and the other picking up the materials.  Well this week they had some extra help.

“What Jack Butler and Josh Wuebker decided to do was take all the street crew and put a third guy with the truck so that we switched off on having that guy that was outside throwing garbage into the truck.  This was to try and give him a break, a chance to warm up and make sure that any skin that was exposed would not be susceptible to frost bite.  It also helped as far as getting it done in a timely fashion.  And I think we did hear from some citizens, there were some citizens that didn’t even put out their garbage.  They didn’t even want to talk to the end of their driveway to put their garbage out, that’s how cold it was” says Niebuhr.

Niebuhr says it’s a good thing this cold snap didn’t come right after Christmas because the department typically picks up around four times as much garbage as usual right after the holidays.

Thankfully, no one from the City was hurt during the extreme cold and Niebuhr says they’re all looking forward to things warming up and going back to normal.