Let me tell you a story that's mildly funny now that I'm past it. I moved into my first apartment in the late summer of 2004. In all the first-time grown-up stuff like signing up for cable and utility service, I only ran into one problem. The woman who'd lived in my apartment before me had developed Alzheimer's, and so her family had taken on power of attorney, which in this case included closing out her accounts. Most services were fine with this, except for one - Piedmont Natural Gas, which insisted (with the bureaucratic certainty that only a company with a monopoly can truly summon) that the person whose name was on the account had to be the one to close it - never mind that that person didn't have the mental capacity to do so, let alone the legal authority.
I moved in at the beginning of August, and by the time the gas company figured out what "power of attorney" meant, it was November, and it was cold. I called to make an appointment to have my heat turned on, only to be told there might be as long as a two-to-three week wait now that demand had increased along with the cold weather. I had a series of very unpleasant nights swaddled in every blanket I owned - I was also getting over strep throat at the time, FWIW. And one night, unable to sleep because I was so cold, I bit the bullet.
My stove was electric. I was raised by a former fire marshal and arson investigator, so believe me, I was perfectly aware of how stupid I was about to be - but I felt like I didn't have any other choice. I set the oven to its lowest temperature, opened the door and curled up on the kitchen floor. I slept pretty well, considering.
For me, this was a short period of inconvenience that I knew would pass. But for many people, that "danger vs. hypothermia" battle is one they fight every day through the winter.
On Thursday night here in Winston-Salem, a four-year-old girl died in a house fire that authorities believe started with a space heater. It's the city's third fire fatality in as many weeks, and the second related to space heaters - the day before Thanksgiving, a woman died when a space heater caught her bedspread on fire. A space heater caused another house fire in Greensboro this week, in which a woman and her two granddaughters were injured. Now, these families aren't stupid, and they're not lazy. They just weighed the options and decided that the risk was worth it.
"We are more concerned now with the economy the way it is, if people can't afford to buy oil heat or pay their gas bill, then the alternatives would be to use some type of portable heater," said Norman Mitchell, the city's deputy fire marshal to the Winston-Salem Journal.
It wasn't fire that killed and wounded these people and destroyed their property. It was poverty. The family of the girl killed Thursday had their heat turned off last winter by my friends at Piedmont Natural Gas when they couldn't pay a $700 bill. That's the cost of a f*cking widescreen TV at Wal-Mart. And now a child is dead.
So what can we do? How do we fix this? We could outlaw dangerous space heaters...but that would leave some poor families without heat entirely. We could push for more regulations governing fire-retardant blankets and drapes, but that's still only a band-aid - it doesn't get at the real problem. Poverty is the macro-level issue here. I'm concerned with something more immediate.
Only something like 20 percent of homes in the U.S. use natural gas, but even the cost of propane and electric heat are tied to the price of oil - which has dropped to a three-year low. Yet the Department of Energy predicts that natural gas prices here in the Southeast will rise between one and two percent this winter. I would like to know why that is. (And don't tell me it's because it's going to be a colder winter. I can fill up my Saturn for half what it cost in June.) I would like for Piedmont Natural Gas - the state-designated provider for my area - to explain to me why a child died over $700. Then I would like my state legislators to tell me what they're doing to ensure that this utility - which I have no choice but to use - isn't gouging the sh*t out of us.
By the way, the other state-protected utility, Duke Energy, has a program called "Share the Warmth," where customers can donate money to a fund that provides heat for poor families. Piedmont Natural Gas has no such program to my knowledge. (And, in case I haven't mentioned, their customer service is sh*t.)
I'm mad as hell, and part of that is a natural desire to look for somebody to blame. A lot of people will blame the family who brought a space heater inside and left it unattended. Some will just throw up their hands at the unavoidable tragedy of it all. Me - once, just once, I want someone other than the grieving relatives to lose sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment