Bright winter sunlight poured in through the open doors of the Mission Museum in Española on Thursday. And though portable heaters were scattered throughout, the several hundred people who gathered to hear about gas-outage financial assistance didn't take off their coats.

Many of them were among the tens of thousands of New Mexicans who spent the last week without heat because of the recent natural-gas shortage, and they weren't interested in losing any body heat.

"It's going to take a while to thaw out," said Sophie Garcia, a retired woman who spent four days huddled under electric blankets in her mobile home without gas.

Garcia said her feet never warmed up during that time, and last Friday she went work with her husband, a janitor in Los Alamos, so she wouldn't have to stay home and freeze.
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