Elderly man freezes to death in home
 

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."

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, said 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.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28858971/

There should be more help for the elderly. What a shame this happened.

There is help but someone has to ask for it.

The alternative is to have some government entity constantly 'checking up' on older folks so that they [the entity] can decide whether or not those seniors are capable of taking care of themselves.

It's a horrible way to die...slow and painful.:(

In the Detroit area, the help is through THAW (The Heat And Warmth fund) that DTE Energy (our electricity provider) sponsors. The problem is, so many people have applied for assistance this year that the fund is practically empty. The big fund raiser for it is the second week in February. DTE has announced that they stopped using those limiters in the Detroit area. They aren't the company that services Bay City. The part of this story that bothers me the most is this:

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.

Apparently you can re-set the device, although, they also said that they shut off that device after 10 days if the bill is not paid.

What's the idea of the limiter? Would it be enough to run your heat?

Any information about where the guy's family was? You might expect a guy in his nineties to have adult children and adult grandchildren. How do you just let grandpa not have heat?

Sure, it's possible he had no one.

ETA: nevermind, it's in the article that he didn't have children: "'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."

The limiter is explained in the article.

It's sad - you would hope he would have family, friends, neighbors, church, SOMEONE who would check in on him. I know some towns have heated shelters - but he probably couldn't drive. :(

It doesn't really answer that question. If it limits your power consumption to a certain point, would that allow your heat to run if the temperature is that cold? I think most of our power bills are mainly heating or air. How limited is limited?

more than likely no....

If you clicked the link I left it goes into detail exactly how the limiter works which would explain why temps were below freezing when they found him.

Nope. Read it. It doesn't explain how much power the limiter gave the guy. It doesn't explain whether it allows a certain amount of consistent limited use, which a way to allow a space heater or something to run but not central heat (and which would shut off power completely if exceeded)OR if it is a wattage or dollar about limit that shuts down the power when that amount total is used.

And further, knowing that temperatures were below freezing when they found him doesn't really have anything to do with anything since we know that the limiter had already shut the power off.

What an awful way to die. :(

Are you expecting a schematic layout of what the limiter does, in that article?

Wow...it's almost academic !!

What aren't you seeing?

The Limiter:
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, said 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.

I am not seeing how you can't figure out how this whole thing works and why you need such a detailed explanation as to how this killed him. It says right there in that passage, "It blows like a fuse." What happens when a fuse blows? NO POWER AT ALL.

It doesn't matter how much was getting to the home, the point IS...once the lights went out, everything else went down hill with it...including his life.

Michigan which one can guess at this time of the year is MUCH colder than say...Florida?

Anyone here from Michigan can give us an avg temp for this time of year?

Everything else is really simple.

The man owed on his bill and is 93 years old ...they put the limiter on and once the time passed...POOF NO POWER NO HEAT... once the power went out, it's almost easy to figure out that the temps quickly dropped in his home thereby killing him from hypothermia.

Really sad, but I agree with Kevin, in that I don't know what could have been done. If he had any family, I would imagine they should have been checking on him, but who knows if the family is estranged, etc.

What they said on the local news about the limiter is that it is supposed to allow enough electricity to be used to keep the heat, refrigerator and stove going. I'm not sure how they determine how much that takes, especially since during that time period, our night time lows were -5 or so with day time highs of 8. My furnace ran continuously to keep the house at 68 during that time period. It was bitter bitter cold. Over 400 school districts in the Detroit area had school cancelled for a "cold" day the day before this guy was found. Bay City is about 150 miles north of Detroit, where it was even colder.

ETA: Since he had no kids and was 93 years old, there's a good chance there was no family at all.