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Working In the Cold

LUZERNE COUNTY — If you thought it was cold outside today, at least most of you were indoors for the better part of the day. This is hard work. It’s...

LUZERNE COUNTY -- If you thought it was cold outside today, at least most of you were indoors for the better part of the day.

This is hard work. It's heavy. It's smokey. It's loud, and now, to top it all off, it's freezing.

"It feels pretty cold standing still. I want to get back to work right now actually," said Dennis Joye, a construction worker.

Dennis Joye is one of the men fixing up the Pierce Street Bridge between Wilkes-Barre and Kingston.

Workers here say they're drilling through the winter since the project's a bit behind schedule, and nothing, not even temperatures in the teens, will stop them.

"As long as the weather isn't unsafe for us to work in, meaning where we could slip and fall or hurt ourselves in some way, yeah, we try to stay out here and work," said Joye.

Sure, they take a few more breaks than they wold in warmer weather, but mostly Dennis says they just layer. So do these car washers at Orloski's in Wilkes-Barre Township.

"I just have like a base layer and then two insulating layers and then my jacket," said Jerry Orloski, from Orloski's Car Wash.

Power washers in the open tunnel out back not only have to face the cold, but also the wet. Just to give you an idea, you can see how much water is being sprayed all over this car, but also back in my face and at the camera. It's a wet job and nobody wants to be doing a wet job in the winter in this cold.

Think about this. If you've ever shopped at this Schiel's Family Market in Wilkes-Barre and left your cart in the parking lot, it's probably Frankie Raimondi who pushed it inside, regardless of the weather.

"You bundle up you know. You get used to it. I've been doing it for a while, you know. Mother nature at her worst," said Frankie Raimondi, who works at Schiel's.

Unfortunately for Dennis, Jerry, and Frankie, Mother Nature doesn't seem to have plans to warm things up until at least next week.

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