State group fears 'death by hypothermia' (Maine)

[jpak]

http://bangornews.com/news/t/news.aspx?articleid=168131&zoneid=500

BANGOR, Maine - The two words Maine Community Action Association President Matthew Smith hears most when he asks those at the forefront of helping Maine families get heating fuel assistance are "fear" and "desperation."

"People are fearful and they are desperate," Smith said in a telephone interview Thursday, hours after a news conference during which he released a series of federal and state recommendations aimed at helping families make it through this winter — and the many more to come.

With the cost of heating fuel up from $1.06 a gallon during the 2002-03 heating season to a projected $5.04, an increase of about 375 percent, it is clear to Smith and the 10 regional community action programs that make up the statewide association that something has to be done, and now.

The association’s recommendations were borne out of a couple of brainstorming sessions and were refined by e-mail, Smith said. Members formally adopted them last week.With 80 percent of the state’s households heating with oil, the impact of the spike in oil prices will be felt far and wide, he said.

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[snappyturtle]

1. This is a disaster just waiting to happen. Unfortunately, I fear that

not unlike the levies in NO the handwriting on the wall will be ignored.

I can really feel for these people having lived in northern MN with oil heat. I had a small home that cost me roughly 500 dollars per winter with a small supplement of kerosene and propane. I budgeted fifty dollars a month and that always sufficed for eight years. To think that would go to 2500 dollars annually is mine boggling. Back then I think I was paying 79.9 cents per gallon. The home was build in the mid seventies and well insulated which helped. But, I think of the ME folks who live in some of those big, beautiful older homes and I shutter at the thought of the cost of keeping warm this coming winter.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. It's going to be really, really bad. A couple of winters ago some of

the students who rent trailers in this park were sneaking out at night and siphoning kerosene out of other peoples' tanks. Not nice! If they were in real trouble from freezing then they should have asked for help from their parents, the landlord, or do what we have done countless times which is give up the beer and weekly pizza nights and buy the stuff by the bucketful from the Irving's way up the road.

[phantom power]

3. And Maine is just one state of at least a dozen...

This is going to pinch everybody north of the Mason Dixon line.

Two months to October.