Andrew Pollack's Blog

Technology, Family, Entertainment, Politics, and Random Noise

High fuel costs this winter mean extra challenges for firefighters

By Andrew Pollack on 09/06/2005 at 10:26 PM EDT

Here in the northeast, home heating is a big challenge. The way some of you in the south struggle to keep the electricity bills down and still keep the house cool in the summer, we fight cold all winter with home heating oil or LP gas fired furnaces. Fuel costs have been rising in recent years, and it’s been a real problem for those on fixed incomes or those out of work. Most towns have assistance programs to help pay the costs of fuel oil in winter, but it doesn’t go far.

Fuel has nearly doubled this year.

At our monthly supper and business meeting at the fire station this month, we talked a bit about what we expect to see for an impact from that. To begin with people are going to use their wood burning stoves more. Wood is expensive too, though so they may well be burning less seasoned or even softwood. Fireplaces and wood stoves long not used will get a workout – we’ll see more chimney fires than usual. As it gets later in the season and really cold, we’ll get other calls as well. Carbon Monoxide calls from portable kerosene heaters, and possibly fires from electric space heaters too close to curtains and sheets hung in doorways to keep rooms separate.

If you’re going to try to save money this winter -- be careful.


There are  - loading -  comments....

Good point to bring up...By Alex Wilson on 09/09/2005 at 02:31 PM EDT
I will make mention of this at our next meeting. Our area uses fuel oil as the
main source due to lack of natural gas around here. LP is also used a lot. My
contract rate for fuel oil this year went up $0.90 so I know many who don't
contract will get hit hard considering the price is already $0.55 above my
contract rate.

One of the things I have found around my area is lack of knowledge when it
comes to using a wood stove or fireplace. Many of the residents are transplants
from Maryland (Baltimore) townhouses. They have no clue about chimney sweeps,
let alone how to burn properly.

Of course, people will be people, no matter how smart you try to make them...
like running generators inside to prevent theft or grilling inside. Duh...

Job security for us poor volunteers!
Well, true enough -- education does help thoughBy Andrew Pollack on 09/09/2005 at 03:08 PM EDT
I've learned some surprising things since joining the fire department. One of
them that's really hit home is, "Anyone, anytime, no matter how careful."

Of course, another is -- most people keep house better than I do, but those
that don't; really really don't.


Other Recent Stories...

  1. 01/26/2023Better Running VirtualBox or VMWARE Virtual Machines on Windows 10+ Forgive me, Reader, for I have sinned. I has been nearly 3 years since my last blog entry. The truth is, I haven't had much to say that was worthy of more than a basic social media post -- until today. For my current work, I was assigned a new laptop. It's a real powerhouse machine with 14 processor cores and 64 gigs of ram. It should be perfect for running my development environment in a virtual machine, but it wasn't. VirtualBox was barely starting, and no matter how many features I turned off, it could ...... 
  2. 04/04/2020How many Ventilators for the price of those tanks the Pentagon didn't even want?This goes WAY beyond Trump or Obama. This is decades of poor planning and poor use of funds. Certainly it should have been addressed in the Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Reagan administrations -- all of which were well aware of the implications of a pandemic. I want a military prepared to help us, not just hurt other people. As an American I expect that with the ridiculous funding of our military might, we are prepared for damn near everything. Not just killing people and breaking things, but ...... 
  3. 01/28/2020Copyright Troll WarningThere's a copyright troll firm that has automated reverse-image searches and goes around looking for any posted images that they can make a quick copyright claim on. This is not quite a scam because it's technically legal, but it's run very much like a scam. This company works with a few "clients" that have vast repositories of copyrighted images. The trolls do a reverse web search on those images looking for hits. When they find one on a site that looks like someone they can scare, they work it like ...... 
  4. 03/26/2019Undestanding how OAUTH scopes will bring the concept of APPS to your Domino server 
  5. 02/05/2019Toro Yard Equipment - Not really a premium brand as far as I am concerned 
  6. 10/08/2018Will you be at the NYC Launch Event for HCL Domino v10 -- Find me! 
  7. 09/04/2018With two big projects on hold, I suddenly find myself very available for new short and long term projects.  
  8. 07/13/2018Who is HCL and why is it a good thing that they are now the ones behind Notes and Domino? 
  9. 03/21/2018Domino Apps on IOS is a Game Changer. Quit holding back. 
  10. 02/15/2018Andrew’s Proposed Gun Laws 
Click here for more articles.....


pen icon Comment Entry
Subject
Your Name
Homepage
*Your Email
* Your email address is required, but not displayed.
 
Your thoughts....
 
Remember Me  

Please wait while your document is saved.