Snow Chased By Cold

Warsawans awoke this morning to a stark, simple truth.

It was cold.

With thermometers' mercury sinking to near 15-below, many area residents were faced with the prospect of returning to work, after an extra day off following last weekend's winter storm, to mountains of snow and bone-chilling cold.

Despite the weather, people are going about their daily business without an inordinate number of problems. Cars started, the streets were passable and no one was suffering too much discomfort due to the frigid weather.

"We've had no one come into the emergency room with cold injuries," said Lynne Eberle, a registered nurse in the Kosciusko Community Hospital emergency room. "We're telling people that if they don't have to go outside - don't."

If leaving the warm comforts of home is necessary, then proper precautions need to be taken, she said.

"Wear multiple layers of clothing and be aware for signs of frostbite, which include a tingling sensation, then numbness, particularly on the ears, fingers and toes," Eberle said. "Go back inside when the first signs of exposure appear and warm up gradually."

Automobiles typically take the brunt of the cold weather, but calls for assistance to a local towing service related more to careless drivers than cold temperatures.

"Some people are idiots," said a service dispatcher who requested not to be identified. "People are asked not to be on the roads unless it's an emergency and our phones are ringing off the hook because people are out looking around and ending up in ditches."

The service is receiving no calls for help with dead batteries or other help with stalled cars, the dispatcher said.

Calls for service on heating systems were driven up also because of the cold, according to Sue Hoppus of ComforTemp of Warsaw.

"We've had a tremendous number of calls for service this morning, and from what I've been hearing from those calls, other companies have too," she said. "It happens every cold snap. It's both commercial and residential, so we're staying busy."

Hoppus added there isn't one particular type of problem that's causing the increased calls for service, with the reasons ranging from service items that people thought they could put off and waited too long, to snow blocking vents.