Actually what you are saying here is not a digression but is the heart of the entire topic.

There are many elderly or indigent folks who have no resources to get to and thus we wind up have stories such as this one.

We may be outraged, or saddened by these events, but where should we place the blame?

This won't be the last time we hear of this type of story.

Referring to number 2: I meant died of natural causes before the heat went out. This way he already would have been dead before he would have frozen to death.

Michigan has experienced a hike. I'm not sure how much but with times being so tough around here, it seems like a large hike. We've been keeping our heat at 73 and it's freezing in here. We normally keep it at 74 and that 1 degree really does make a difference. My house is big and open and you'd think it'd be easier to heat the house but it's not.

If this man didn't have family at all, what resolution could have been made? Neighbors can only do so much, especially if they weren't friendly with him.

My local utility company is really small town in operations, but has a lot of programs so this doesn't happen. Allegedly they won't shut off power in the winter (last night is was below 0), but I'm not sure if it is a state law or just their policy.

https://www.avistautilities.com/comm...s/default.aspx

I like that they also provide translators, and don't limit information to just energy. I'll round my bill up a bit and donate to their "project share", and when they did the CFL rebates I donated all the money back.

What about electric heaters? Would that help at all?

We have one in our "sunroom". The extra windows and skylights make the room 10x colder than the rest of our house. The space heater slightly helps but you have to REALLY be careful with those. Way too many house fires caused by them.

I think that most people still see it as their responsibility to care for their parents. However, it is much more common to live further away from your family as well. "Back in the day" people didn't move far away from their home towns so they had frequent contact. Now, a lot of retired parents move out of state and children don't usually stay in the area where they grew up because of lack of opportunities. My dad moved to Florida and my brother moved to Alabama and I am stranded here in the frozen wasteland of Michigan while they enjoy their mild winters in the South. Oops, didn't mean to vent my resentment here :) But yeah, they abandoned me for the mild winters and year round golfing <sigh>

I do think, in general, that we do not honor and respect our elderly as they do in many cultures. We see getting old as a bad thing and don't listen to the wisdom of the elderly, forgetting that they've already lived through everything that we're trying to cope with in our own lives. However, every single person I know tries their hardest to care for their parents. I know that when I was caring for my mom in her last months with us, I did have the thought that I was role modeling for my own kids how to treat *their* mother! That's all a moot point with this guy because he didn't have any immediate family left. It definitely is an argument for having kids!

There is an old saying "Be nice to your children. They are the ones who will be picking out your nursing home."

I don't know what society's responsibility is in a case like this. It seems like, in January in Michigan, the electric company could wait a few months before shutting off the electricity OR get the person set up with assistance. It would be to their benefit to get them set up with assistance because then they would get the bill paid. It's even possible that the poor guy didn't have the cognition to pay his bills or something. Meaning, he may have had the money but didn't remember that he didn't pay, didn't have stamps.. who knows?

ETA yet again because y'all keep posting while I'm typing: Yes, we have had big price increases. In fact, the company that this guy had just announced another rate increase today. Our heat is actually gas up here, for most people in cities. In rural areas, they may have propane or heating oil, but most is natural gas heat. The blowers for the furnace are electric though. So, no electricity= no heat, even though it's gas heat. I keep my house at 64 at night/when we're at work/school and 68 during waking hours that we're home. I have a fire in the fireplace if it's too cold. We wear sweatshirts and slippers and use blankets (not Snugglies!) around the house. When you're moving around, it's fine at 68. It's when you're sitting around watching TV that it gets chilly. We have electric blankets at night. My gas bills for this winter have been running about $300 a month, electric around $95. I'm on a budget plan though. They average my last year's usage costs into one monthly payment so it is the same all year. In November, they true up and either I owe them a lot or they owe me some. We really really scrimp on electricity and heat in October so that we don't owe! My budget plan this year is $186 a month for gas and electric together. To rack up $1000 electric bill really does take some time. I rarely use my family room in the winter. Because it's an addition, it's on a cement slab and it has 3 outside walls with French doors and a huge bay window. It's the coldest room in the house all winter.. probably 10 degrees cooler than the living room! It stinks.

Maybe your house is better insulated than mine, but I'm blown away that you keep it about 70. We're set to be about 68 in winter in Georgia, so I can't imagine what you'd pay to keep it 73 in Michigan.

Even if you aren't friendly with him, if you have a 90+ neighbor, I'm going to say it's your civic duty to check on him if it's that freezing cold. It might be your moral duty to check in on him daily, but that's probably between your moral code and you.

I'm trying to really put myself in their shoes and I can see why you'd wait. I think what I'd really do is try to set up a rotation of checking with my other neighbors so it wasn't super awkward.

Ummmm because 68 here is a beautiful fall or spring day!

I keep my house at 45. The heat kicks on to let it get no colder than that. I am fully clothed at home, have a blanket (not the slanket or the snuggie though ;) ) and I have one space heater that I can set to maintain a certain temp (I set it at 55 so I can sleep, any higher than that I get too hot). I don't have central air, just these dumb space heater type things for each room, though there is one that runs next to the exterior pipes for the kitchen. It really doesn't bother me too much, but yeah, the temp in my house has been in the mid to upper 40's. I also have a second space heater I will turn on in my office only when I am in there working, and I turn all the power strips off when I leave.

Oh and it is in the Idaho Administrative Code that power can't be turned off December through February to those who declare there are children, elderly, or infirm residents, and they have payment plans set up http://adm.idaho.gov/adminrules/rules/idapa31/2101.pdf My roommate moved out and the power dropped $50 and it has been colder.

Speaking for the entire south, we'd love to have you too. We have health care industries and Alpha Gamma Delta chapters. Just saying.

It seems like we can all say we have a responsibility in these cases. It's just hard to figure out how to deliver the services people need or even figuring out what they need if they feel that they don't want to ask or don't know who to ask.

As far as my own family, there's been a history of caring for people and assisting them in their homes until they eventually basically got sick enough to go in the hospital and not come out. But as you said, all these cases were in the same town.

Maybe I was being too hard on people earlier. Maybe it's just the times I've heard of people wanting to put their parents in a medicaid supported home, it made such an impression.

Right, but I mean in my house in the winter, we keep it at 68. It might be 30 outside. And you are in the cold, cold winter and your heating to 73. It's just blows my mind, but again, your home is probably better insulated.

Um, the 40s inside is too cold for me, but celebrate your small carbon footprint!

And as I said earlier, I'm not sure that just straight no cut off represents the best policy, but if it's the only way to keep people from freezing to death inside, maybe that's what you have to do.

Does anyone else run stuff like this through your little house on the prairie mental filter? If the freaking pioneers could live without electricity at all or gas heat in freaking Nebraska or whatever, why do we now think we need free heat to live?

(and sure we don't all have fireplaces and wood stoves today, but I don't think they had them fired up 24 hours a day and they still survived.)

We'd still come back to a 93 year old guy living alone and he'd had a hard time at any point, but we've all gone soft and we're stupidly dependent of stuff we don't actually provide for ourselves.

There's that.. and the fact that I'm hopelessly in love with a man with lives in Smyrna and have been since 2000. I'm just hoping he's still single in 5 years when my youngest goes away to college :D

My mom was really adamant that she would not live with me under any circumstances. She was also at a point that she couldn't have been maintained medically at home. She needed more nursing care than could be provided reasonably. Her big fear was that my kids would find her when she passed and she didn't want them to go through that. She passed before we had to make a final decision. The nursing home we had picked out though was 1/4 mile from my house so I intended to be there every day and the kids were planning on walking over there after school to see grandma sometimes too. I think some of what we're seeing is simply because people are living longer and longer. Women are working outside the home so even if they moved their parent into their home, they wouldn't be supervised. Alzheimer's patients get to a point where they cannot be maintained in a family home because they can wander off while the family is sleeping, etc. I don't think we can judge people for those kinds of decisions. I DO think it's horrendous to put someone there and never go to see them.

In the case of this guy, there wasn't even anybody to move him into a safer environment. It truly is sad.

Well I've mentioned on GC before I'm a perfect example of Bergmann's rule, I think I just handle cold better. I walked to and from school yesterday and people were whining about the weather, and I thought it was gorgeous, I even got so warm I had to unzip my coat. Today there were more whiners (8am class) and I felt fine. My whole trip to Vegas I was miserably hot, and I don't think it got above 65. I keep my extremities covered though, as I am not interested in frostbite.

For some reason, 68 in the summer vs 68 in the winter are two completely different temperatures. I think the thing is that, especially in big houses, it may be 73 by the thermostat but NOT in the bedrooms and ESPECIALLY not in the basement. Tile and wood floors are also very cold. Plus...in GA, the winter temp is in the 50s or so, right? Maybe 40s, but rarely lower? We routinely get to the negative degrees, especially with wind chill.

Bedrooms can be 5 degrees below the rest of the house in temperature, too.

Vandal: How do your pipes not freeze???