Bay City Electric Light & Power‘s policies will be reviewed, but the city doesn’t believe they did anything wrong. (Meanwhile, Bay City Electric Light and Power is raising rates. The movewas approved Monday night and the retro-active rate hike will cost theaverage homeowner an extra $21 per year.)
A 93-year-old man (see update here) froze to death inside his home just days after themunicipal power company restricted his use of electricity because ofunpaid bills, officials said.
Marvin E. Schur died “a slow, painful death,” said Kanu Virani, OaklandCounty’s deputy chief medical examiner, who performed the autopsy.
Neighbors discovered Schur’s body on Jan. 17. They said the indoortemperature was below 32 degrees at the time, The Bay City Timesreported Monday.“Hypothermia shuts the whole system down,slowly,” Virani said. “It’s not easy to die from hypothermia withoutfirst realizing your fingers and toes feel like they’re burning.”
Schur owed Bay City Electric Light & Power more than $1,000 inunpaid electric bills, Bay City Manager Robert Belleman told TheAssociated Press on Monday.A city utility worker had installed a “limiter” device to restrict theuse of electricity at Schur’s home on Jan. 13, Belleman said. Thedevice limits power reaching a home and blows out like a fuse ifconsumption rises past a set level. Power is not restored until thedevice is reset.
The limiter was tripped sometime between the time of installation andthe discovery of Schur’s body, Belleman said. He didn’t know if anyonehad made personal contact with Schur to explain how the device works.
Schur’s body was discovered by neighbor George Pauwels Jr.
“His furnace was not running, the insides of his windows were full of ice the morning we found him,” Pauwels told the newspaper.
Belleman said city workers keep the limiter on houses for 10 days, thenshut off power entirely if the homeowner hasn’t paid utility bills orarranged to do so.
He said Bay City Electric Light & Power’s policies will be reviewed, but he didn’t believe the city did anything wrong.
“I’ve said this before and some of my colleagues have said this:Neighbors need to keep an eye on neighbors,” Belleman said. “When theythink there’s something wrong, they should contact the appropriateagency or city department.”
Schur had no children and his wife had died several years ago.
Bay City is on Saginaw Bay, just north of the city of Saginaw in central Michigan.