The George Wiley Center’s voicemail inbox can no longer handle all the after-hours calls from seniors, single-parent families and other residents in danger of losing electricity due to unpaid bills — or already without it.
“People are in crisis,” Camilo Viveiros, executive director for the Pawtucket consumer advocacy group, said in an interview Monday. “At this point, it’s not unusual that we come in the morning and we have 40 messages of folks that have called overnight.”
The Wiley Center inbox is just reaching its 40-message limit. But Rhode Island’s supply of natural gas has long been under infrastructure constraints that put the Ocean State toward the undesirable top of the list of highest state electricity prices…