That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a long holiday break. While the city had a Christmas party at Christos’ Banquet Center for its employees on Christmas Eve many of Marquardt’s workers left the engine running — literally.
“I know a lot of the guys just stopped long enough to grab a little lunch and then got back out there,” said Marquardt. “I remember pulling in to the parking lot and seeing our equipment out there and thinking great, everybody’s going to wonder what’s going on now is nobody working, but some of the trucks were still even running. They came in but they got right back out to work.”
Marquardt and crews were on the city streets late into the night on Christmas Eve making sure roads were passable. The ice mixture is the big problem.
“I’d really rather have a foot of snow than this ice,” said Marquardt. “You can move the snow with your equipment, you don’t use any materials. This ice is just hard to deal with.”
Materials are not a problem currently for the Plymouth Street Department crew. That doesn’t mean they won’t have trouble later in the year.
“We’ve already used a lot more salt this December than we usually do. I really can’t remember it being this cold in a long time,” said Marquardt. “It’s still early in the winter and you can’t use all your materials up right now. We have a long way to go.”