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Project assists elderly with heating homes in winter
By Justin Goble
With the cost of oil rising and temperatures dropping, local volunteers are assisting the elderly with heating their homes.
Project Fuel Inventory for the Rural Elderly, which is coordinated through the Jackson County Department on Aging, delivers supplemental firewood to the homes of elderly citizens. According to Ben Friddle, who has directed the project for the past two years, it’s a service that is needed in the area.
“The need is pretty severe,” Friddle said. “Churches have started their own lists of people who need help. Calvary Baptist started a list, and we’re working with them. A lot of groups have been doing something similar, and we’ve been working with them to see who needs help. The need seems to be increasing.”
It’s a problem Friddle said he’s often seen in person throughout the county.
“Many times I show up at a house which is heated with wood, and there is just a small pile of wood in the front yard,” he said. “Some of the elderly don’t have much family to help them with it. I went to this one lady’s house and asked her how she piled up as much as she did. She told me it took her all day to do it.”
The project, which has been going on for more than a decade, relies on volunteers and donations. Friddle is the only paid worker that helps with Project FIRE, due to his employment through the Department on Aging. The rest of the helpers are those that have donated their time and energy to the program.
Project FIRE does receive help from an unlikely source, though.
“Jackson County inmates help me cut and bust the wood,” Friddle said. “We have three or four Saturdays in which people can volunteer to deliver it. Firewood gets donated by T&S Hardwoods. They have been very supportive of us. All the wood, since I have been here, has come from them. This year alone, they donated 10 dump-truck-loads full of logs.”
Delivery efforts run from November to February, but plans begin earlier than that. The process usually begins by getting in touch with volunteers and then seeing who needs assistance, Friddle said.
“We usually start in late fall,” he said. “I start trying to contact groups and get labor. I get the Saturdays set up, and then I ask T&S for wood I don’t have any left over from the last year.
“Then, I start with last year’s list (of people we delivered wood to),” he continued. “I call through and see if they need wood. We’ll have some people say ‘no.’ But, through word of mouth, people find out about us and call in. Home Health or other services call me as well.”
Though delivery usually ends in February, there are occasions when a home needs firewood during at an unexpected time of the year.
“Last year, I delivered the last load of wood in early May,” Friddle said. “A woman called me and told me she had a drafty house and asked if I could bring some wood. That’s not typical, but it does happen.”
While the project does its best to see to the heating needs of the elderly during the winter months, the main goal is to serve as assistance instead of the main source of fuel for those who heat their homes with wood stoves. If the program served as the main source for wood during cold weather, Friddle said that the number of people he and his volunteers could help would be drastically smaller.
“We try to give people two loads a year,” he said. “We’re a supplement, not a primary source of wood. If the program was a primary source, I think I could only provide help for maybe a dozen families. If there’s an emergency situation, I usually take it anyway, but we try to tell people our limit is two. We have to draw the line somewhere.”
The amount of support for this year’s efforts has been phenomenal, Friddle said. So far, nearly 100 loads of wood have been delivered. He was especially surprised by the turnout he had on Dec. 3, in which he had many groups, such the Western Carolina University men’s baseball and women’s softball teams, Boy Scout Troop 914, retired state employees and church groups offer their services.
“We had 80 volunteers that Saturday,” he said. “Several brought their own equipment, like wood-splitters, axes and chainsaws. We had so many volunteers we had to stop because we ran out of wood. We normally have around 30 volunteers.”
Along with the pleasure of helping those in need, Friddle said that he enjoyed working with Project FIRE because of the relationships he forges with the volunteers.
“It’s nice because you see the same volunteers over and over again,” he said. “You develop a relationship with them even though you only see them when you haul wood.”
Reaction to the effort has been positive, he said. Though he doesn’t deliver as many loads as the volunteers, Friddle said they report back to him that the response is often overwhelming.
“My volunteers tell me that sometimes people cry,” he said. “When I deliver loads, many times they come out and say ‘thank you’ profusely. People are usually very grateful.”
As for future efforts, Friddle said that the project would continue as long as the need arose.
“Right now, we’re playing it by ear,” he said. “We try to serve everyone. If we find out someone has a need, we try to do something about it. As the need increases, we try to fill it.”
For more information or to volunteer for the project, contact Friddle at the Department on Aging at 586-8562.
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