Volunteers supply heat for the needy

GARNER -- The heating oil tank behind Jimmie Avery's house is empty. It would take $500 he doesn't have to fill it full of diesel to heat his house this winter. So to keep warm, Avery is relying on Mother Nature and the kindness of strangers.

Avery is one of a record number of Wake County residents who have fallen on hard times this fall and requested donated firewood from a volunteer program run through the county Human Services department. Volunteers delivered Avery a pickup load of wood last week, and he is rationing it in hopes it will last all winter.

"I hate asking anybody for anything, because I've always been so self-reliant," said Avery, 54. "But I'm having a tough time."

Already, more than 45 families have asked for a load of firewood from Wake Human Services. That's 15 more requests than the department received all last winter. With the coldest months of the season still ahead, the program manager fears the unprecedented demand is a small taste of what's to come.

"These are people who will need us all winter, and these are people who never expected to need us," said Denise Kissel, manager for Warmth for Wake, a program that organizes volunteers to chop and deliver wood to families in need during the winter.

Another group of families with no wood-burning stove or fireplace have requested a space heater. At least 25 families are on a list waiting for available space heaters; Kissel has already given out 15.

Many of the families, Kissel said, are struggling this winter for the first time. Kissel describes the stories she has heard: A parent lost a job. Grandma had to take in her grandchildren. Medical bills have stacked up.

Avery used to chop his own wood. Now he walks with a cane, arthritis eating up the two knees doctors have already replaced after years of lifting and loading sacks of meat at a Smithfield packing plant. Avery's heart is ailing, too. Since September 2007, he has suffered two attacks.

By the time he recovered from the most recent attack last spring, work had dried up at the towing company where he was a dispatcher. Avery has applied for disability assistance and filled out job applications at a half-dozen retail stores, a movie theater and a dry cleaner.

"Not nobody is beating down my door to offer me work," Avery said.

When he received a price estimate for a load of heating oil this fall, Avery shuddered. He had already canceled his satellite television and phone service. Still, he didn't have the cash the oil company needed up-front to pay for the delivery.

The cost of utilities is pushing many families over the edge, Kissel said.

Starting Monday, rates for Progress Energy rose about 10 percent. Customers with gas heat through PSNC will also be paying about 8 percent more this month, though that rate could fall early next year. Based on the rates alone, the average household should expect to pay about $10 more a month to heat their homes, according to figures released by Progress Energy and PSNC. Propane and diesel costs also rose this year.

This season, though, families may feel even more of a pinch if the coming winter brings colder weather than in recent years.

The area has already had its first snow flurries this season, and overnight temperatures have dropped well below freezing several times.

For Kissel, that means one thing. She needs more donated trees and able bodies to chop them up. Her fleet of volunteers meets most Saturdays on a plot of land at Raleigh's Yard Waste Center off New Hope Road, where they rev up chainsaws and load piles into volunteers' trucks for delivery.

The effort to keep families warm has drawn men's church groups, college fraternities and even Boy Scout troops. Girl Scouts donated blankets that Kissel's group has delivered to recipients, along with the wood.