Posted on 01/26/2009 3:59:22 PM PST by nbhunt
BAY CITY, Mich. - 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."
A city utility worker had installed a "limiter" device to restrict the use of electricity at Schur's home on Jan. 13, said Bay City Manager Robert Belleman. 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.
read more http://www.verizon.net/newsroom/portals/newsroom.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=newsroom_portal_page__article&_article=1545094
(Excerpt) Read more at verizon.net ...
I wonder if he belonged to a church. It’s an incredibly pathetic story.
Who knows where they were when he died, but I can assure you they will be seen at an attorney's office very soon.
A young person may have been able to survive the low temperatures. Elderly folks don’t have a chance.
We’re from the government and we’re here to help.
Plenty of money to spend for this, though.
“I look forward to working with Congress to restore U.S. financial support for the U.N. Population Fund,” Obama said Saturday.
Only the beginning, people.
What a sad story.
There is no excuse for this.
How hard could it be to look at the file of this guy and see that this was a very old man who most likely needed a little help and some kindness?
I guess that's another mistake I've made.
Very sad.
But I wonder. When the press is in multicultural mode, they defend the practice among some tribal peoples in the far north of senilicide by hypothermia, saying that hypothermia is a peaceful and painless death.
Now, when it happens in the lower 48 thanks to government malfeasance (can you imagine the firestorm if it had been a private utility?), hypothermia is described as a slow, painful death.
Anyone reading the thread ever have an near brush with death by hypothermia and care to comment from experience?
No children, wife died several years ago.
In one of the other articles posted about this on FR tonight, it said that he had money clipped to the electric bill - guess they never told him when they put the limiter on his meter or the employee "wasn't authorized" to accept payment.
Article says he had no children and his wife passed several years ago. He owed $1,100 and the neighbor that found him found the bill on the table with cash clipped to it.
IMHO, cutting someone power when temps are that low just shouldn't be done.
An elderly member of my Husband's family did without... she didn't want to have to ask for the assistance when her bill fell behind. And the utility company never offered.
That is sad, but also inspiring. To me, it tells of an individual who accepted her fate without lowering her standards. Applause.
You know, death isn't the worst thing that can befall someone with standards.
Rest in peace, for you are now in a far better place. I hope you are again with your beloved.
How could such a tragedy happen in a state and city run by do-gooder Democrats?
Qbamawama is gleefully supplying the tax payers money to help murder the mst innocent, an old man freezing to death in the name of money means nothing.
I suppose the next step will be restricting the number of children a couple can have with the results of having more would be that the goverment taking them to the ovens.
The slope is well greased and the way down is swift and unstoppable.
“Anyone reading the thread ever have an near brush with death by hypothermia and care to comment from experience?”
Well, I don’t know how close I ever got to hypothermia, but one time when I was hunting (in Northern Illinois) a few years back in early December my toes got to hurting like hell (and I was dressed in good cold-weather gear, such as Sorrel winter boots, thermal and wool socks, etc.) so I headed back to my Jeep to get out of the elements, and by the time I got there my toes were completely numb: I couldn’t feel them at all. However, after about 30 minutes sitting in my Jeep with the heater on I felt my toes again; and HOW, I felt my toes! A pain that was beyond pain as my toes regained circulation. That was frostbite. If hypothermia is anything like that, I never want to experience it.
Hey, the real story is that this man had no family. The GOVERNMENT run utility installed a device on his electricity that limited the amount of power he could draw into his house. If he went over, it shut it off like a circuit breaker. His furnace did not run! He froze! The city run utility did this to him!
He had money on his kitchen table clipped to utility bills, it sort of sounds like he had the money but just had not paid the bill. Sometimes people in their 90’s forget things. For sure no one should have expected him to remember how to go out and reset his limiter device on the power pole.
It is a little different write-up in the local paper and explains a few more details:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2172273/posts
If this had been Consumers Energy, the big utility in the area, I’m sure heads would be rolling. This is a small town that does not let Consumers provide power, they have their own city run utility. The city is run by clowns, for the most part.
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