WILTON – December’s temperatures fell while fuel assistance programs continued to wait for funding.

The thought of what’s going to happen this month and in February is frightening, Tania Gage and Judy Frost, managers of the fuel assistance program at Western Maine Community Action, said Friday. Each has more than 25 years experience with the program, but they’ve never seen it like this, they said.

A month ago, U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, met with Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program recipients and tri-county community advocates in Lewiston. She was asked to push for more federal funds to offset the need in Maine this winter after she heard stories of how Mainers are coping. She then promised to lead a demand for more funding in Washington.

Meanwhile, Gage and Frost handle the calls for assistance with resources dwindling. The program has served 79 people since the end of November with emergency funds that are attached to LIHEAP, Gage said. The 79 were people with no fuel.

Funds from the Emergency Crisis Intervention Program provides 100 gallons of fuel in an emergency, but are given out monthly. There were no more funds until after today, she said.

Money from the Franklin County Ecumenical Heating Fund can provide for 50 gallons of fuel in an emergency. The fund has served 36 people since October but it relies entirely on donations from area churches.

“It’s not good,” Gage said. “Prices are so high. A hundred gallons of No. 2 fuel oil would cost $314 today and kerosene prices, when I last checked, were $3.60 a gallon. Basic fuel assistance is between $500 and $700 a season.”

The program serves approximately 2,500 people within Franklin County, although there have been a lot of new people this year. The supplemental fuel program was designed to help pay one third of a participant’s heating cost for the winter. It won’t do that this year, she said. When it began, oil prices were low enough so that the amount would sometimes pay most of the season’s heating bills.

Pride tends to stop a lot from asking, she said, but she reminds people that their tax dollars create the programs.

When people call, they are encouraged to make a plan, Gage said. Local oil companies are willing to set up payment arrangements, she said.

“They are the ones making the deliveries and seeing older people wrapped in blankets and children with running noses,” she said.

“People can’t wait and expect we’ll be able to work it out for them,” Frost said. “We don’t have the resources.”

Many people who apply are couples and people who work two jobs but can’t make ends meet. The costs of day care, transportation, rents and mortgages, paid on wages of sometimes $8 an hour, make it difficult, she said.

The Rev. Scott Planting from Fairbanks Union Church on Thursday said he receives four to five calls a day with requests for heating assistance. For some emergency situations, he has provided a five-gallon container of kerosene to restart a furnace.

Both Gage and Frost grew up in times when neighbors helped neighbors. Even if people don’t know their neighbors, they need to lend a hand, they said. Perhaps towns will have to step up and appropriate money for general assistance like they used to do, Gage said.