Maine residents forced to make difficult choices to keep homes heated

With the costs of home heating fuel skyrocketing, Bangor Daily News reporters set out to discover the actual difficulties those costs are creating. Many alarming stories emerged, some of which will be told in more detail next week. Some are not being told at all because the victims of $100-a-barrel oil feel too embarrassed by their circumstances to let us reveal them. Here are some vignettes of Mainers in Crisis.

…Judy Ruszczyk, 38, rents a heated apartment in Rockland. Recently she ran out of oil and called the landlord, but was told he couldn


“He told me to pay the bill and deduct it from my rent,” she said. “The trouble was the bill was $514, which is more than my rent.

“I called the oil company and paid the bill,” she said. “It took every cent I had, which wasn