By Ashley Perham, Charleston Gazette-Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Four days into the natural gas outage on the flats of Charleston’s West Side, the cold is taking a toll on residents young and old.
“I feel kind of mad because we don’t have no hot water or no heat at the house, so we have to use heaters, electric blankets and stuff, and it’s raising the … electric bill,” said Manuel Agoe, 11.
Manuel is a fifth-grader at Mary C. Snow Elementary School, where he picked up a free lunch Tuesday. The school is closed for the rest of the week, but students will be doing remote schoolwork on the iPads they picked up with their bologna sandwiches.
A school staff member said about 100 lunches had been given out over two days.
Instead of being excited that school is out for a week, Manuel was upset that he didn’t get to see his friends. He said he’s wearing sweatpants and staying under blankets to keep warm. His friend Zion Hughes, 10, said he wears a snowsuit at his house.
Both boys said they are scared their houses might explode like one exploded on the West Side last week.
(Lt. David Hughes, a spokesman for the Charleston Fire Department, said the cause of that explosion is still under investigation but that the current gas outage is not being considered as a cause.)
“It’s pretty sad,” Zion said, “because it’s kind of not fair because other people have electric houses and some of them didn’t get the gas in their water so they’re good, and it’s kind of not fair.”