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A tale of two bed bug-troubled cities: Cincinnati, Columbus

nobugsonme — Sat, 23 May 2009 05:12:56 +0000

My report about the Hillrise Apartments in Cincinnati the other day highlighted what can happen when local officials stop inspecting rental units based on bed bug complaints.

As you’ll recall, funding was cut at the end of 2008 for the Cincinnati Health Department’s bed bug inspection program.

Here’s another story with bedbugged tenants, this time in Columbus, Ohio, where the Franklin County Board of Health is able to inspect homes based on tenant complaints.

NBC4i reports that some residents of The Pointe Apartments on Harrisburg Pike, fed up with bed bug bites, have evacuated their homes for hotel rooms:

[Tenant Chris White] called officials after an exterminator hired by the property managers didn’t show up May 6.

The property manager wasn’t immediately available for comment.

Neighbors are helping each other look for bed bugs in their cushions and mattresses.

“It’s not my responsibility to do this. It’s the apartment complex. I’m helping friends out,“ he said.

Residents received a letter from the complex officials saying that exterminators would arrive on May 6, but residents said the exterminator never showed up.

Franklin County health officials went door-to-door inspecting apartments.

For the second time since last fall, health officials are issuing orders for pest control as soon as possible.

[Emphasis added.]

Obviously, if there are inspectors who can come in and issue pest control orders, this does not mean bed bugs will necessarily be eradicated quickly and fully.

However, tenants who can call upon such services stand a much better chance than those who can’t. And of course, they are able to call again, if the problem persists, as it did in this case, and the inspectors can become involved again.

Note: the Franklin County Board of Health (this is their bed bugs page) is part of the Central Ohio Bed Bug Task Force, a group that stepped up, according to this article in the Columbus Dispatch last September, when local officials started to become aware of the problem and its effects in Cincinnati.Similar Posts:

Towels under the door: when cities abandon tenants with bed bugs

nobugsonme — Thu, 21 May 2009 18:10:55 +0000

This is what happens when local authorities cannot help low-income tenants get help and treatment for bed bugs.

WLWT in Cincinnati reports that the Hillrise Apartments for Seniors in College Hill still has a serious bed bug problem. Cincinnati, you’ll remember, did not fund its Health Department’s bed bug inspection program in their last budget, and ceased doing bed bug inspections in January 2009.

The Cincinnati Health Department had to cease inspecting for bed bugs even though requests for assistance had gone from 70 requests in 2007 to 750 in 2008.

The residents at Hillrise Apartments appear to be living without proper bed bug treatment, claiming they’ve had bed bugs for years. In fact, we ran a story on Bedbugger about bed bugs in the Hillrise Apartments back in October 2007, when they were already said by tenants to have “spread from one end of the building to the other.” And that was over nineteen months ago!

The video linked below shows senior citizens attempting to ward off bed bug bites with 91% isopropyl alcohol (a contact killer if sprayed directly on a bed bug, this won’t prevent bed bugs from biting) or attempting keep them out of apartments with a towel stuck under the door. The video shows bed bugs crawling and fecal traces in the corners of a room that must have had bed bugs for a very long time.

WLWT notes that many residents have sought medical help for the bed bug bites and

The problem is so bad that local hospitals have actually called the Health Department looking for help for Hillrise residents.

The Cincinnati Health Department says landlords are responsible for treating to get rid of bed bugs, but as as we noted above, the Health Department no longer sends inspectors to identify the problem and educate residents about treatment options:

The Health Department said it did have a program that would check for bed bugs and then educate residents on their options, but that program was cut months ago when the city slashed its budget.

Please go to Seniors Battle Bed Bugs At Infested Apartment Complex – WLWT Cincinnati to read the full story and watch the depressing video.

And think long and hard about what happens when local public officials have good ideas about fighting bed bugs, but no funding to implement them.

And before anyone asks, yes: I get that the economy stinks. However, it’s more expensive to treat bed bugs when an infestation is allowed to get very bad. And obviously, the longer it goes on, the more citizens will get bed bugs (increasing treatment costs exponentially).

We’re talking about a city in which a recent study found one in six people had had bed bugs. One in six, according to the Spring 2008 Greater Cincinnati Health Survey conducted by the University of Cincinnati Institute for Policy Research.

And that was in Spring 2008; I do expect that number to grow.

If infestations are allowed to go on for years, with insufficient or no bed bug treatment, not only do the residents suffer, but bed bugs also continue to spread to others and infest more people’s homes, causing more suffering, costing more money.

I wonder how many more people in Cincinnati and the surrounding area have bed bugs as a result of this particular infestation being allowed to go on for years. Similar Posts:

Cincinnati stops bed bug inspections; MSNBC touts Cincinnati’s educational campaign; hmpf.

nobugsonme — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:05:05 +0000

Cincinnati’s health department got almost 11 times as many requests for help with bed bugs in 2008 compared with 2007 (the number jumped from 70 to 750). And the Cincinnati Enquirer reports today that they’ve now ceased inspecting for bed bugs.

Hmpf.

We knew this was coming when the 2009 budget did not include the $291K needed for this purpose. The City is trying to find this money from other sources.

MSNBC sings the “Cincinnati has bed bugs” song today:

Health officials said the best way to combat the city’s bed bug problem was to raise awareness, and now the whole world knows about the area’s resurgent pests.

But awareness is only one factor in the fight against bed bugs.

MSNBC also notes that while 15% of Cincinnati residents has had bed bugs, only 31% are using licensed pest control specialists to get rid of them. It is important to understand that licensed PCOs are not necessarily experienced or knowledgeable about bed bugs. You’d be surprised by how many licensed PCOs still don’t “get” bed bugs. And don’t forget that even knowledgeable PCOs may be stymied in their bed bug treatment by the inability to treat neighboring units in buildings. (This may come down to money, tenants’ or landlords’ refusals to have inspections or treatment of adjacent units.)

Inadequate or incomplete bed bug treatment (which likely includes most self-treatment, and probably a lot of professional treatment as well) is likely a key factor in why more than 10 times as many people called the Cincinnati health department in 2008 compared with 2007.

It’s really hard to get rid of bed bugs even if you know what you’re doing.

Public education and the willingness to receive such reports likely accounts for some of it too: how many more people suffered from bed bugs, vs. how many more called the city about the problem (where they might have kept it to themselves).

But come on, Cincinnati!

Don’t you realize citizens and city alike will have much worse financial problems if in 2009, you see a rise in bed bug cases?

And come on, news media!

Let’s put two and two together. It isn’t enough to be the city that understands the depth of its bed bug problem. They also have to come through with more than awareness: cold hard cash, legislation, action.Similar Posts:

Forget bed bugs “over there” in Cincinnati. Look in your own sofa cushions!

nobugsonme — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:15:08 +0000

This in a new article from WLWT NBC 5 in Cincinnati:

Dr. Camille Jones, assistant health commissioner for the Cincinnati Health Department, said the city’s bedbugs have gained fame not because its problem is worse than other cities, but because local officials have more aggressively tackled the problem.

“We’re trying to get ahead of it, and we’re also the only city that has baseline data on about the prevalence of the problem,” Jones said.

In other words, cities like New York and Chicago look like they have less of a bed bug problem than Cincinnati, because they have not even attempted to come up with statistics on the scope of the problem.

I personally find it amusing when the news media outside Cincinnati talk about the rise of bed bugs in that city, instead of considering their own bed bug problems which are receiving (in most cases) less attention from the local government or health department.

Case in point? Articles like this recent one from Los Angeles, which appeared in various iterations in Australia and Connecticut — a country and a state with big bed bug problems, at least in some of their cities.

On the positive side, articles such as this raise awareness of bed bugs as a problem. They introduce the idea that one in six people in a city could have encountered bed bugs in a short span of time. Thanks for driving that idea home, Cincinnati!

And they hopefully also bring a lot of people to look at the bed bug activist site New York vs. Bed Bugs. Even if they sadly missed Renee’s point (and misquoted her to boot), publicity for the issue and the organization is still good.

(Still, “a clean house”? Seriously? Are we still there? I thought we had moved past the idea that there might be a correlation between bed bugs and housekeeping.)

Anyway, isn’t it silly to talk about bed bugs “over there in Cincinnati,” when you haven’t even turned your mattress over for a look?

But even if readers think, “Ewww, Cincinnati!” they’re also probably thinking, “Oh, if Cincinnati, then maybe here, too.”

And when it comes to agitating for change, imagination is key.

Until everyone thinks, “Bed bugs could (will) happen to me, too,” there will still be those who laugh at the idea of bed bug task forces, or bed bug legislation.Similar Posts:

Cincinnati cuts budget, cancels $290K bed bug inspection program

nobugsonme — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 22:55:40 +0000

This does not seem good. At all.

Cincinnati’s newly approved budget cut $290,000 — a choice which, according to this article in the Cincinnati Enquirer, cancels a bed bug inspection program.

What was approved in the budget?

– $1.8 million for police overtime walking patrols;

– Restoration of the appliance collection service, but for a fee to be researched by the administration and approved later by council;

– $1.8 million expected from the federal government in reimbursement for the September windstorm, to go into emergency reserve savings account;

– $250,000 for renovation of the Clifton Cultural Arts Center;

– $248,000 small business loan for Goodies Barbecue restaurant to open a second location in Price Hill;

– $100,000 the mayor wanted to spend educating people about the importance of their participation in the 2010 census.

I understand money is tight and bed bugs may not seem important to many. But they are. And getting rid of them once they spread further is so much more costly than preventing their spread by catching them early.Similar Posts:

Cincinnati city/county combined bed bug task force drafts bed bug plan, not a moment too soon

nobugsonme — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 00:43:30 +0000

Rich Jaffe reported today for Local 12 in Cincinnati that the combined city/county bed bug task force (Greater Cincinnati in Ohio, and Hamilton County, ~~Kentucky~~ Ohio) has released a draft report of their plan to combat bed bugs. Jaffe also reports on one Silverton, Ohio building that is infested with bed bugs, and one tenant, who moved to flee an infestation (generally not a good idea).

Jessica Burton, who fled an infested apartment, said:

“They’re definitely in our couches, underneath the carpets, definitely in the bed, all over the bed. I was doing dishes one night, seen a couple crawling across the counter, thought it was wood tick.”

Jessica Burton says she fled her apartment here two weeks ago because it was so filled with bugs, leaving behind virtually everything. Her baby was covered with bites. Moving in last October, Burton says no one told her the apartment had been infested previously. Downstairs from her apartment, we found the bugs everywhere.

Rich Jaffe: “The owners of this building tell me they have dealt with the bed bug problem before and they are continuing to try and get a handle on it, but it’s really tough. They even have an exterminator headed over here on Saturday.”

Unfortunately, bed bug infestations are very difficult to fight. But they can be treated. With such a situation, the answer will not be simple, and will need to involve landlords, tenants (including all neighbors), and professional pest control operators. Having a city/county bed bug task force is important because the bed bug problem needs to be considered and dealt with outside of individual apartments being sprayed. Or it simply is never going to go away.

To their credit, local officials are very concerned about the current bed bug crisis in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky — as well as with the future projected “growth” of the bed bug problem:

In this draft report, city and county experts say, complaints about bed bugs could easily quadruple in the near future. If so, costs could reach one million dollars, locally. Problems include chemical resistant bugs and how to fund the task force attack. But for Jessica Burton, the question is where does she go from here.

“To me, I was proud of this. I woke up every day like I’m on top of the world, pay my bills by myself, don’t need to rely on anybody, then all of a sudden, you’re like …. Wow… That’s what I feel like, wow… Like I’m walking in another world every day cause we don’t have a clue how we’re going to redo it.”

We hear stories like this every day in the Bedbugger forums — stories of people, like Jessica Burton, who are seriously knocked off-kilter by the losses incurred in treating (or in this case fleeing) a bed bug infestation.

Cincinnati still has a lot of work to do. But they have already held meetings for residents, declared war on bed bugs, implemented a bed bug hotline, implemented a system for picking up infested furniture, and changed their laws to class bed bugs as “vermin” (local laws about pests did not name bed bugs among pests it was against the law to harbor). They’ve held multiple meetings of local officials, worked together with their counterparts in adjacent localities; officials in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana also held a tri-state meeting about bed bugs.

The Cincinnati Health Department’s website features bed bugs on the main page, with links to both a 2-minute public service announcement on bed bugs (download), and a 27-minute video (misleadingly dubbed an “infomercial” in the credits) on bed bugs from Tom Hooper, a Registered Sanitarian (!) from the Cincinnati Health Department (download).

The latter is much more informative, and (in my opinion) contains better quality information. It begins with an explanation of why people need to be worried about bed bugs (citing, among other cases, the Winnipeg 73-unit building that had been infested and treated for three years straight). It also goes through bed bug habits, identification (including photos of German cockroach nymphs and dog ticks, which people may mistake for bed bugs), inspection, prep, and treatment.

I don’t agree with absolutely everything in the video, for example, I’ve learned to tell people to get a professional’s or housing inspector’s inspection before they attempt to thoroughly clean and/or declutter their homes. Nothing should be moved until a professional is consulted. Also, many viewers will be mislead by the photos provided of the inspection process, since many — if not most –people will not see such glaring evidence. The information on treatment is also necessarily limited by time constraints, and sometimes a little information is a dangerous thing. I’d like to see more emphasis on professional treatment.

Despite these beefs, and the fact that it may not be the most exciting film ever shot, the bottom line is that landlords, homeowners, institutional managers, and tenants all need to be aware of this kind of information, and I applaud Cincinnati for providing it, prominently, on their Health Dept. website. I assume it is also being shown on television as PSAs generally are, but maybe someone local can confirm this.

Interestingly, the two videos’ credits tell us they were produced by the Cincinnati STD/HIV Training Center, suggesting that resources previously used to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS are being employed to help stop the spread of bed bugs. This use of resources implies that bed bugs are being taken seriously as a health problem.

Still, people like Jessica Burton are still experiencing the problem acutely — and it is seriously affecting their physical, mental, and financial well-being. Bring on the bed bug plan, Cincinnati and Hamilton County! Similar Posts:

Last week’s Town Hall Meeting in Cincinnati

nobugsonme — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 01:04:44 +0000

It’s a week later, but I did want to comment on the media’s follow-up from last week’s Town Hall Meeting in Cincinnati, about the bed bug problem.

WCPO.com’s Lynn Groud reported on the event last Monday. Hundreds of bed bug sufferers turned out. One speaker said:

“For many older adults, they are a 24-hour a day problem. Their homes are so infested they are visible during the day, crawling on the older adult, crawling on the walls,” said one speaker.

City, county and state leaders answered questions, acknowledging that bed bugs are multiplying and moving in to more and more homes at an alarming rate.

“Some of the bed bugs will go into the mattress, they will put their eggs into the mattress,” said Ken Hippner, of Command Pest Management. “So, we go out and kill what we can see – then go weeks or months later – and the eggs hatch and have new bed bugs emerging.”

But hiring an exterminator can cost hundreds of dollars – and many at the town meeting were hoping the city would offer more help.

“That’s what I want to know,” said Collins. “Are they gonna come out and do this free, because I can’t afford it and neither can these poor people.”

That’s what we want to know too!

WCPO reports that the Cincinnati Bed Bug Task Force “are planning an emergency meeting and hope to come back in December with more solutions.” Lets hope financial assistance for landlords and homeowners is at the top of the list.

Click to watch WCPO.com’s video or read the article.

However, one reader, entoman, apparently attended the event, and had this to say:

entoman said:

November 6th, 2007 at 10:19 am edit

The Bed Bug Town Hall meeting was very confusing. Obviously the people on the Bed Bug Task Force did not compare notes before they presented their information. The Commissioner of Cincinnati Health Department stated you do not need a professional, you need an integrated plan that would include the use of soap and water. Another official stated temperatures of 98 degees will kill all bed bugs. Even another stated that pesticides do not work. Hamilton County Health Director said to sleep with the lights on (this would prevent bed bugs from biting). He also said to use 90% isopropyl alcohol (there are legal issues with this in Ohio). The information pamphlets that were handed out contradicted all of this and said home remedies do not work.

The only positive thing is that Susan Jones from Ohio State is on the Task Force. Dr. Jones is known for her research with termites but is starting to get into bed bugs. Hopefully she will be the voice of reason.

As I said in the other thread, I really appreciate having the perspective of an actual attendee (and one who is, judging from his pseudonym and his comments, an entomologist). The recommendations quoted above are a reason why government officials need to have all their ducks in a row, when it comes to speaking to the public about bed bugs. Bed bug experts need to be involved in the planning, and officials need to get their story straight as far as what to recommend and what not to recommend. Having pamphlets that recommend one thing and speakers suggesting the opposite is not going to help attendees fight their bed bugs.

Public education around bed bugs is needed for consumers, but to make a difference, and avoid confusion, we have to start by educating the people who are working in government and social services. Similar Posts:

Urgent: if you’re in Cincinnati…

nobugsonme — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 08:40:44 +0000

… you might want to go to this meeting tonight (11/5).

Peggy O’Farrell reports for the Cincinnati Enquirer vis Cincinnati.com:

Learn more about how officials are responding to bedbug infestations in Cincinnati at a town hall meeting at 6:30 p.m. Monday at the Cincinnati-Hamilton County Community Action Agency, 1740 Langdon Farm Road, Bond Hill.

State Rep. Dale Mallory is hosting the meeting, which also features Chris Monzel, chair of the Cincinnati City Council’s health committee; Suzanne Abel-Burke from the Council on Aging for Southwestern Ohio; Susan C. Jones, an entomologist with the Ohio State University Extension; Chris Eddy, director of environmental health with Hamilton County Public Health, and Mohammad Alam, director of environmental health with the Cincinnati Health Department.

Information: Cynthia Ellis, 614-466-1645.

This seems like an important town meeting on bed bugs, and it would be great to hear from people able to attend, or who were involved.

(Editor’s note: I would not normally quote an article in full, but this seems like important information. I hope Peggy O’Farrell and Cincinnati.com will indulge me, just this once.)Similar Posts: