Marvin E. Schur froze to death in his home near Saginaw, MI after his power was restricted by the power company over his backlog of $1000 in unpaid bills.
Bay City Manager Robert Belleman told the AP "Bay City Electric Light & Power's policies will be reviewed, but he didn't believe the city did anything wrong."
More outrage after the flip....
This is absolutely unbelievable. A municipal power company restricts power to an elderly shut-in with no follow up. The man was widowed and had no children. His frozen body was discovered after neighbors noticed the windows frosted from the inside.
According to the Bay City Times:
Marvin E. Schur died "a slow, painful death," said Kanu Virani, Oakland County's deputy chief medical examiner, who performed the autopsy.
...
"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."
Words escape me.
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.
But the city was unable to say whether anyone had explained how it works to Mr. Schur. The story didn't say where the device was located--presumably at the meter, which may well have been outside or difficult for the man to reach.
Is this what we have become? Power can be restricted to an elderly man in the dead of winter and it's nobody's job to lift a finger?
I even checked their web site just to be sure--
"Bay City Electric, Light & Power(BCELP) is a municipal utility, owned by the City of Bay City, Michigan."
I could believe this from a for-profit utility (actually, I wasn't sure that municipal utilities were legal anymore--didn't the republicans outlaw them or something?). A municipal utility can just limit or turn off an elderly shut-ins power with no referral to social services, or the police, or anything. Shouldn't the city red tag the residence as uninhabitable if there's no power? Is that too much to ask?
Nope. They just walked away and let him die. But here's the clincher--
"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."
And the city manager doesn't think the city has any responsibility for having one city agency contact another when they, themselves, have first-hand knowledge of this type of situation. Nope, it should be left up to some other unspecified "neighbors". But he apparently doesn't feel that the city bears any responsibility for leaving a 93-year-old man to freeze to death.
Here's a couple of links:
Bay City Electric Light & Power
900 S. Water Street, Bay City, Michigan 48708
Phone: 989-894-8350 Fax: 989-893-7121
Robert V. Belleman
City Manager
301 Washington Avenue
Bay City, MI 48708
989-894-8246
rbelleman@baycitymi.org
Mr. Belleman evidently does not think he is his brother's keeper--at least not to the point of having one city department notify another that an elderly man is in danger of freezing to death.
Shame on him.
UPDATE--
Thanks to Mr. SeeMore for this link. According to WNEM-TV:
Schur’s neighbor, Herndon, said Schur had a utility bill on his kitchen table with a large amount of money clipped to it, with the intention of paying that bill.
Right now the city said the situation is still under investigation. Marvin Schur was a World War II veteran.
A memorial service for him will take place Wednesday at 11:00 a.m. at the Gephart Funeral Home in Bay City.
That's just heartbreaking. Well, at least we know he was not forgotten (the comments are scathing).
UPDATE #2:
Here's the original link to the AP story, via Yahoo News.
UPDATE #3:
After pondering this and reading the comments I want to add something--
I don't believe that anyone wanted this man to die. I don't even believe that anyone in the chain of responsibility doesn't care. It took a "perfect storm" of circumstances for this to happen. It took lax policies, including a state law that covers only for-profit utilities. What makes it even more inflamatory is the quote from the City Manager that "nobody did anything wrong".
This is the carelessness of the organization. Of bureaucracy. Of mindless rule enforcement.
But the point needs to be made. Many individuals will likely feel tremendous remorse and guilt. More important than punishing any one individual is achieving change in Bay City AND using this example to prevent this from happening elsewhere.
There is a much greater problem with for-profit utilities. They are more likely to be callous and careless. So we need to use this tragedy to reinforce our commitment to prevent this very type of injustice.
So let's "turn up the heat".