BOSTON (AP) – In the heat of August, Rocco Pelosi is already thinking about January.

Behind his Haverhill home, Pelosi, 78, has piled firewood he’s gathered from his 1.5-acre backyard and from around the neighborhood. Come winter, he’ll stoke the stove he bought to help heat his house.

The half-cord of wood, though, hasn’t eased Pelosi’s worries about the cost of home heating oil after the weather turns cold. With market prices at record highs, heating oil already well over $2 a gallon locally, and oil production disrupted in the Gulf of Mexico, he’s not looking forward to his bills come winter.

“There’s got to be something done about it, because there’s no reason why in this country, that things should be the way they are,” he said. “For God’s sake, when things like this happen, oil doesn’t go up two or three cents, it goes up a nickel or a dime, but then it goes down a penny.”

The high oil prices are already causing concern about wintertime, when fuel prices can become a life-and-death situation for the poor and the elderly. Worries about fuel costs Monday rose as Hurricane Katrina roared through U.S. oil and natural gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico, sending crude-oil futures briefly above $70 a barrel for the first time.

Brian O’Connor, spokesman for Citizen’s Energy Company, a nonprofit organization that helps provides low-cost fuel to the poor, said people are already calling the organization looking for help with home heating aid, even though it’s still summer.

“People are very concerned,” he said. “The fact that people are calling now, on a day when (the temperature’s) in the 80s, is indicative of the kinds of concerns that are out there.”

Community organizations around the state that dispense federal fuel assistance funds, known by the acronym LIHEAP, say that at the zenith of summer, they’re getting far more calls than usual from people worried about the winter.

John Feehan, deputy director of Lynn Economic Opportunity, Inc., said August is when the agency starts its application process for people seeking the federal fuel funds. Typically, a few people would drop by or call, he said.

“Not this year. We’re packed,” he said. “We’ve got lines already.”

Last year’s maximum household allotment from the state was $805 dollars per household, and home heating oil was about $1.70 a gallon. At the current prices of $2.30 a gallon and up, that assistance could pay for as little as one tank of oil. High-use homes, with children or elderly people, can burn through a tank each month, Feehan said.

It’s a refrain that’s heard from New Bedford to Boston. John Drew, executive vice president of Action for Boston Community Development, said last winter was “a horror,” but this winter could be worse.

“The people we help have no ability to handle these spikes,” he said. “I’m dreading this winter. It’s going to be brutal… In the coldest part of the year, we won’t be able to help them.”

Massachusetts has a law that prevents utility companies from turning off gas or electricity after Nov. 15 for nonpayment. But there’s no such regulation in the home oil industry. If a delivery truck arrives, and there’s nothing to pay the driver, then no oil.

Philip Hailer, spokesman for the state Department of Housing and Community Development, the agency that dispenses the fuel aid to local groups, said the federal government is in the middle of calculating how much aid it will provide, but the state won’t know for some time how much to expect.

Once the allocation is made, the government can increase it with emergency money. Last year, the state’s allocation started at $70 million, but totaled $90 million by the end of an especially bitter winter.

“There are just so many variables,” he said.

Pelosi, meanwhile, is stoic about what lies ahead. He got his fuel aid application in the mail a few days ago, and needs to assemble the documentation of his and his 84-year-old wife’s meager income before he can send it in. But send it in he will.

“I don’t want to cry on anybody’s shoulder,” he said. “I try to make ends meet. If I didn’t have them to help me, I don’t know what the hell I’d do.”