Cincinnati.com reports that fourteen people living in a Hamilton County, Ohio apartment building were displaced overnight by a fire caused by someone spraying alcohol-based pesticides while smoking:

Fire investigators have determined the blaze was started by a resident spraying for bed bugs while smoking, said Capt. Steve Conn, spokesman for the Colerain Township Fire Department.

“They were spraying for bed bugs, and it had alcohol in it,” Conn said. “One of the residents lit up a cigarette, and it basically flashed and started the room on fire.”

[Emphasis mine.]

This is very dangerous, obviously, and it is a good thing no one was seriously injured, and that most of the residents have been able to return home.

This Hamilton County Public Health document (click for PDF) reminds residents who rent that

If you rent a home or apartment within Hamilton County (excluding cities of Cincinnati, Norwood, Sharonville or Springdale) and you think you have bed bugs, please contact the Hamilton County General Health District at (513) 946-7832. Health District sanitarians will work with your landlord to eliminate the problem.

Self-treating for bed bugs is often ineffective and can be dangerous, as this story reminds us.  And this is not the first fire caused by attempts to get rid of bed bugs.

People in Hamilton County have other options for bed bug treatment; what about tenants and low-income homeowners living elsewhere who don’t?Similar Posts:

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New York vs. Bed Bugs points out the distressing data from a recent survey: the Cincinnati/Hamilton County Joint Bed Bug Task Force (JBBTF) sponsored a series of questions in a survey conducted by The University of Cincinnati Institute for Policy Research. They found that 14.5% of Cincinnati residents surveyed had had bed bugs.

Renee of New York vs. Bed Bugs writes,

Cincinnati, population 332,252, received give or take 757 official bed bug complaints in 2007. Do we realize what this survey suggests about the likely underreporting rate? The official stats could account for less than 2% of the actual cases.

And is it possible that there could be ______ New Yorkers who have bed bugs? Why can’t we have this type of survey here?

I agree, and I suspect we would find the percentage of New Yorkers who have or have had bed bugs is much higher than that represented by HPD bed bug violations.

We’ve known for a long time anecdotally that the official numbers probably do not account for the majority of NYC bed bug cases.

It’s scary to consider that a number like this 14.5% might be applied to the NYC population.

And let’s not start in on the fact that the same survey found 31% of Cincinnati residents with bed bugs used only an over-the-counter spray to fight their bed bugs — a method likely to allow bed bugs to keep on thriving and spreading.

New Yorkers, don’t walk by the entire wall of bed bug spray in the Duane Reade on Fifth Ave. in midtown and tell me you are not worried. Join us at New York vs. Bed Bugs and write your letter to tell the city to do something, now.
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This video from WLWT and this article from WCPO announce that Hamilton County is warning parents about the possibility of children bringing bed bugs to or from schools.

According to WCPO, Hamilton County has issued guidelines to schools regarding bed bugs, which include:

training staff to identify bed bugs; discretely removing a child from the classroom for an inspection; bagging and sealing belongings that have bed bugs; and notifying parents when their children have bed bugs.

I am troubled by the language suggesting children who “have” bed bugs carry them around on their bodies, which sounds like a description of lice.

It is possible that a person could be covered in bed bugs, but it’s important to remember that bed bugs can crawl onto or off of a person (or their belongings) at any time. They do hitchhike on clothing or in bags, but they do not live on people. They generally feed for 3-10 minutes and then flee. If a bed bug is found on a child in school, it does not mean the child brought the bed bug into school.

Places, not people, are infested with bed bugs.

The WLWT video shows Greg Kesterman of Hamilton County Public Health reminding parents to “regularly check your child” and the child’s bed for bed bugs. Not bad advice, though bed bugs could be elsewhere in the home.

I am glad that Cincinnati’s school employees and parents are thinking about bed bugs and being told what to do when they surface. I am especially happy Hamilton County parents will hear from the school if bed bugs are found there. I just hope the message is made clear to parents that bed bugs are a different kind of communicable pest, and if anyone “has” them, they have them in their home (or schoolbus, or car, or school), not “on” a kid.
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I am a bit swamped and don’t have time to respond in more detail at this very moment, but wanted to make sure you all see this excellent analysis of the response to bed bugs by Hamilton County, Ohio, from Renee of New York vs. Bed Bugs.

On your way over there, have a look at the PDF of the brochure which Hamilton County Public Health is distributing.

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Renee of New York vs. Bed Bugs is bringing the updates on the Toronto Bed Bug Action Committee Toronto Bed Bug Project here and here, and a rundown on what’s up with the Cincinnati / Hamilton County Joint Bed Bug Task Force Strategic Plan here.

Definitely check out those posts, and the links Renee provides.Similar Posts:

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Why?

Because she’s one of those entomologists who’s telling it like it is, to public officials who want to ignore the bed bug problem. The Columbus Dispatch quoted Jones Tuesday as saying,

“If you bury your head in the sand, you’re going to get bitten, and it’s just going to get worse and worse,” said Susan Jones, an entomology professor at Ohio State University.

And because she’s trying to convince public health officials that bed bugs are a health problem, something many health officials don’t seem to get:

“The question is: Is it a public-health issue or not?” Columbus Health Department spokesman Jose Rodriguez said. “Bedbugs are really looked upon as a nuisance issue.”

OSU’s Jones, however, said scabbing, secondary infections and the anxiety caused by fearing your own bed are serious health concerns.

Amen. It’s not just about the bed bug bites, for crying out loud.

Those alone are often more than a nuisance, but the loss of sleep, anxiety, and loss of money due to treatment or preparations for treatment (which can mean people do not get the food, health care, or other resources they need) can have even more serious health consequences for many.

Susan Jones is involved with the Cincinnati/Hamilton County Joint Bed Bug Task Force.

Code enforcement handles individual complaints, but Jones recommends a centralized master plan.

She suggested a task force that combines the expertise of pest-control, health, code-enforcement and housing agencies. Trends would be easier to spot with all the complaints and treatment numbers in one place, and a task force also could coordinate a publicity campaign to tell people how to stop the spread of bedbugs.

People should seal infested furniture in plastic before disposing of it; travelers ought to check hotel beds for pests; and exterminators need to know that bedbugs are harder to kill than most insects, experts said.

Jones works with a similar task force in Hamilton County. The group was launched after the Cincinnati Health Department received 737 bedbug complaints in 2007 – the same number as for mice, rats and roaches combined.

I wonder how New York City’s bed bug complaints stack up against our complaints for mice /rats / roaches?

The article’s basic focus is on how Columbus / Franklin County, Ohio need to step up their own response to bed bugs.

Well, you know what they say: admitting your city or county has a bed bug problem is the first step towards solving it.
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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:

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The Kentucky Post and WCPO (ABC9 in Cincinnati) reported that there was an “Emergency Meeting” held behind closed doors last Friday to discuss the bed bug problem in the tri-state area of Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. (Indiana was not mentioned by name in any of the articles, but we can assume it’s the third state in question since it borders Ohio and Kentucky near Cincinnati.)

WCPO noted that the meeting was hosted by Ohio State Representative Dale Mallory and that “state representatives, the Cincinnati Health Department commissioner along with several city councilmembers and county commissioners will try to find solutions” to the bed bug problem. Another source, kypost.com, said the meeting attendees also included Hamilton County (Kentucky) Coroner O’dell Owens. (The Coroner! If the coroner is involved, surely bed bugs must be a health concern? I see from the Hamilton County Coroner’s Organizational Flowchart that Toxicology is the likely interest here. Or perhaps Forensics: bed bugs are criminals–guilty of stealing our blood.)

Owens said, “In 2005 there were five to seven complaints on bed bugs. They’ve already had 19 the month of January. And last year I think they had 180. So this is an issue that is growing to cross neighborhoods. This is not just for poor people. Other people need to understand that bed bugs is not from people being unclean. You can have a home in Indian Hill and have bed bugs.”

There is no mention of whether local bed bug experts were involved, but I truly hope they were.Similar Posts:

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