BATON ROUGE — Mayor-President Sid Edwards said Friday that East Baton Rouge Parish's emergency operations center has ceased operations after five days of continuously monitoring cold weather that included the city's second-lowest temperature and its second-highest snowfall total.

"The biggest deal for us is to review the film, so to speak, and look at what we can do better," said Edwards, who until last month was the football coach at Istrouma High School.

Edwards thanked the community and local officials for their help keeping people off the roads, and noted it was his "first rodeo" during an emergency situation as mayor-president.

"Folks were outstanding," he said. "There were a lot of questions about a curfew or not. We didn't have to do a curfew. The good ol' people in Baton Rouge knew what to do and how to act and they came through like shining stars." 

The city-parish set up multiple warming shelters and sought to move people inside as temperatures dropped to 7 degrees, which matched the low on Feb. 14, 1899. A day earlier, on Feb. 13, 1899, the temperature fell to 2 degrees.

More than 400 people were taken into the shelters. All returned home or were taken to other more permanent shelters, Assistant Chief Administrative Officer Jeff LeDuff said.

LeDuff and Edwards also noted that Councilwoman Carolyn Coleman helped two of the homeless people who took shelter in the city's warming centers get job interviews.

Members of the Mayor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, as well as local police, EMS and fire authorities, said that the city made it out the other end of the winter storm mostly unfazed mostly thanks to proactive measures taken in the days leading up to the sub-freezing temperatures arriving on Tuesday.

Baton Rouge Police Chief T.J. Morse said that his officers closed 70 streets during the freeze, as well as bringing dozens of homeless people to shelters. Now, Morse says things are "back to business as normal in the city of Baton Rouge."

Fire Chief Michael Kimble said that there were seven fires during the freeze, but "no fire was in relation to the misuse of heaters."

Edwards said that 33,600 pounds of salt and 84 cubic yards of sand were used to treat and protect priority routes. Central Throughway, was the last roadway to reopen. It was given the all-clear Friday.