Old Man Froze to Death Over Utility Bill

[Starving.Wolf]

To paraphrase Jensen: “Reason number 262 why Civilization must be brought down” – I’ve been livid over this for 3 days.

[u]93-year-old froze to death, owed big utility bill
January 26, 2009 3:39 PM ET [Associated Press]

BAY CITY, Mich. (AP) - A 93-year-old man froze to death inside his home just days after the municipal power company restricted his use of electricity because of unpaid bills, officials said.
Marvin E. Schur died “a slow, painful death,” said Kanu Virani, Oakland County’s deputy chief medical examiner, who performed the autopsy.
Neighbors discovered Schur’s body on Jan. 17. They said the indoor temperature was below 32 degrees at the time, The Bay City Times reported Monday.
“Hypothermia shuts the whole system down, slowly,” Virani said. “It’s not easy to die from hypothermia without first realizing your fingers and toes feel like they’re burning.”
Schur owed Bay City Electric Light & Power more than $1,000 in unpaid electric bills, Bay City Manager Robert Belleman told The Associated Press on Monday.
A city utility worker had installed a “limiter” device to restrict the use of electricity at Schur’s home on Jan. 13, Belleman said. The device limits power reaching a home and blows out like a fuse if consumption rises past a set level. Power is not restored until the device is reset.
The limiter was tripped sometime between the time of installation and the discovery of Schur’s body, Belleman said. He didn’t know if anyone had made personal contact with Schur to explain how the device works.
Schur’s body was discovered by neighbor George Pauwels Jr.
“His furnace was not running, the insides of his windows were full of ice the morning we found him,” Pauwels told the newspaper.
Belleman said city workers keep the limiter on houses for 10 days, then shut off power entirely if the homeowner hasn’t paid utility bills or arranged to do so.
He said Bay City Electric Light & Power’s policies will be reviewed, but [glow=yellow,2,300]he didn’t believe the city did anything wrong.[/glow]
“I’ve said this before and some of my colleagues have said this: Neighbors need to keep an eye on neighbors,” Belleman said. “When they think there’s something wrong, they should contact the appropriate agency or city department.”
Schur had no children and his wife had died several years ago.
Bay City is on Saginaw Bay, just north of the city of Saginaw in central Michigan.

---

Information from: The Bay City Times, http://www.mlive.com/bay-city

[system]

[kveldulf]

I think we have a law about this kinda thing up here.
Temperatures have to be above freezing for a certain period to cut someones gas or electrical… something like that.

What goes through someones head to do that to someone, though?

Are we really at the point where people need laws/regulations to tell them whats right?

[incendiary_dan]

To only slightly paraphrase Harry Redner, laws are the technification of ethics and morality.

Conflating laws with ethical behavior is an unfortunately common product of hierarchy and domestication.

[JessicaMoore]

Totally. Especially since the laws only exist to force people into the trap of the wage economy, which explains why those at the utility company would adhere to “the rules” rather than make an exception that could save someone’s life - there can exist no other option but to pay whatever the companies decide to charge. Period. The whole system depends on everyone accepting this, without protest.

Unfortunately, the majority do. It would only take a certain number of people to collectively refuse to accept this scam, for it all to fall apart. Too bad the vast vast majority cannot even comprehend an alternative, much less embrace it.

Jessica