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160-unit Richmond, California complex evacuated for tent fumigation of bed bugs

nobugsonme — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:12:07 +0000

Remember the 160-unit Hacienda high rise in Richmond, California?

We suggested last month that one bed bug spray treatment probably would not be enough to get rid of bed bugs in this affordable housing complex. And sadly, we were right.

The backstory on this is that tenants council complained to the city about bed bugs in April and were given piecemeal treatment of “a handful of units” back in May; the management said it knew of 11 units infested with bed bugs, even though 63 tenants had signed a petition asking the city to get rid of bed bugs.

Finally, in the last month, the city came through with a plan and funding to get the entire building tented and fumigated — with what, we do not know. The article says “A large tent is scheduled to be cast over the 160-unit Hacienda high-rise Friday morning, and crews will spray the building with a pesticide.”

The Contra Costa Times reports that

Tenants begged the city to tent and fumigate the building rather than spray individual apartments, as it did in May, to ensure the pests are killed for good. The Housing Authority agreed and moved ahead with the plan.”Once they got started, they really haven’t wasted any time getting on top of it,” said Dolores Johnson, president of the tenants council.

The Housing Authority is tallying up expenses and doesn’t know what the final price tag will be, [Manuel Rosario, deputy director of the city Housing Authority] said, but booking the hotel rooms for tenants to stay several days will cost more than $60,000. Each family also is receiving a per diem for food. The amount varies, but can run in the hundreds of dollars per unit.

That $60,000 price tag only covers the hotel stay for tenants!

The article notes that some units are infested with fleas and others with bed bugs.

Interestingly, the move-out plan included having residents’ dogs and cats bathed upon evacuation:

In the rear parking lot, pet owners handed their dogs and cats over to groomers waiting in a mobile pet-grooming van. Candace Kidd, lead dog stylist for Aussie Pet Mobile in Marin County, used a plant-based product to wash the animals. Groomers found at least one dog with bedbugs hidden in its fur.

“They (bedbugs) are very similar to fleas,” said Dave Ely, owner of Aussie Pet Mobile. “They’re a bloodsucking insect. They get on you, and at night, they munch on you.”

I hope the plan goes well, and that tenants are educated about how not to take bed bugs to other places (like hotels or family members’ homes), and that tenants and staff are also educated about how to avoid bringing bed bugs into the building again in future.Similar Posts:

Bed bugs bite in Richmond, California public housing development

nobugsonme — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 04:42:18 +0000

Bed bugs were first noticed by residents in the 150-unit Hacienda high-rise in Richmond, California in March, and now “at least half the apartments” are infested, according to the Contra Costa Times, which reports that

Exterminators visited a handful of units in May, told the tenants to call back if they started seeing more bugs in 20 days or so, said Dolores Johnson, president of the tenants council. [Tenant Denise] Cordoba called after 10, but nobody came out to spray again. A number of residents received letters in mid-August telling them the city would exterminate but needs them to vacate for at least eight days. The Housing Authority and members of the resident council met Thursday to discuss how to tackle the problem.

Bug bites now mark residents and frequent visitors to the Hacienda like an exotic leprosy. Tenants poke speckled arms out their doors for inspection, talk about how their grandchildren no longer visit.

“It’s an ungodly feeling,” Cordoba said, “like the hair standing up on the back of your neck.”

Some collect great jars and bags of the flat, red-brown insects. Itch medicine doesn’t always help. Nor does getting down on hands and knees to scrub walls and floors with bleach, which [tenant Billy] Nichols does daily, despite his paraplegia.

Bed bug infestations being treated with one spray-and-pray treatment?

Tenants being told to call in 20 days for re-treatment if they see bed bugs? That’s no way to get rid of bed bugs.

A man with paraplegia on his knees scrubbing the floor in a futile attempt to stop bed bugs from biting him?

And then there’s the suggestion by a resident that her living conditions were better when she slept rough on the street:

“I was homeless for four years. I slept in fields, under freeway overpasses,” said Denise Cordoba, who lives on the fourth floor. “But it wasn’t until I moved here that I got bedbugs.”

These stories of long-suffering tenants of city-maintained housing which is infested with bed bugs appear in the news weekly. They’re a dime a dozen. Many of them detail bed bug infestations going on for years and affecting entire buildings.

And yet I am constantly amazed at how poorly bed bug infestations are being managed.

The article notes that Housing Authority Director Tim Jones said he was aware of only 11 affected units (though in April 63 tenants signed a petition for relief). He is considering options for eliminating the problem including evacuating and fumigating the entire complex.

Let’s hope the residents get some relief soon.

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S.F.’s bedbug battle a war without end

nobugsonme — Mon, 04 May 2009 00:11:47 +0000

A new article by C.W. Nevius in the San Francisco Chronicle considers the difficulty of eradicating bed bugs from local apartments and hotel rooms, and then need for alternative, more effective methods in the city’s never-ending battle against bed bugs.

[Dr. Johnson Ojo of the San Francisco Department of Public Health] has put together a citywide policy that covers all the basic steps: Hotel managers who learn of an infestation must immediately set up a pest-control spraying, and residents are encouraged to follow specific instruction on washing clothing and showering with hot water.

Yet many who deal with the problem regularly think that current methods are no more than stopgap measures. Faced with a growing epidemic, the city needs to start thinking beyond the idea of squirting insect spray and hoping for the best.

“I feel like there has not been enough research on alternative methods,” said Jeff Buckley, director of the Central City Single Room Occupancy Collaborative, which works with 5,000 to 7,000 people each year who live in supportive housing. “I know for a fact that one hotel in the Tenderloin has had 14 sprays in the last two months.”

That’s not necessarily because the hotel is doing a poor job of attacking the pests. Bedbugs are everywhere, particularly in supportive housing. But it is an example of the scale of the problem and how hard it is to solve. Consider, each of those 14 treatments is actually three consecutive sprayings per room, two weeks apart.

And the bedbugs keep coming back.

“In terms of nonroutine maintenance, bedbugs are at the top of our list,” said Richard Heasley, executive director of Conard House, which provides supportive housing in 525 units for clients with chronic mental illness. “It is the single most frustrating problem we have to deal with.”

The article suggests that thermal treatment offers one possibility for effective, one-shot treatments, but it is expensive, and would be hard to implement city-wide. I’d love to see San Francisco take a stab at that.

See S.F.’s bedbug battle a war without end.Similar Posts:

Bakersfield family gets bed bug help from the Discovery Channel

nobugsonme — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 02:48:54 +0000

Remember Kay Hammer, in Bakersfield, who we told you about last November? She had tossed out most of the family’s furniture. The landlord would not deal with the problem, so she called Eyewitness News 29.

Iso Tech Pest Management’s Mike Masterson brought in a bed bug dog and did a thermal treatment. They also found bed bugs in several other units of the building and in her daughter’s home across town.

The story will air on the Discover Channel’s Verminators series, probably in the summer. You can view the Eyewitness News 29 segment below.

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San Diego State University: don’t wait for students to show you a bed bug

nobugsonme — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:18:40 +0000

The Daily Aztec (an independent student paper) reported yesterday on the bed bug situation at San Diego State University. Officials there say there are currently no known bed bug cases, though the article notes there have been bed bugs found on campus in recent months.

One place bed bugs were discovered: the “egg chairs” in the Counseling and Psychological Services office. (This makes sense: people with bed bugs are under a lot of stress, and liable to seek help!) Director of the center, Dr. Sandy Jorgensen-Funk:

“We immediately shut down the chairs,” Jorgensen-Funk said, “so that they weren’t used by students, as soon as we found this out.”

Jorgensen-Funk added that the chairs were then treated for a second time in November and again last month.

“We didn’t know what they were,” she said. “We just wanted to make sure that we weren’t exposing students to a problem.”

Whether any students were exposed to the problem before the treatments were conducted is not known at this time.

The existence of bed bugs in the egg chairs strongly suggests the existence of bed bugs elsewhere on campus.

Here’s why: the bed bugs did not spontaneously arise in the egg chairs. Someone who had been exposed to bed bugs sat in the chairs, and the bed bugs stayed there. They could have climbed off a person, or walked directly out of a person’s bag.

They may have come from a dorm. Or a student’s off-campus home. But either way, we have to consider that if the bed bugs hitchhiked to one location, they can (and probably did) go to others as well.

We do not know how many bed bugs were seen in the chair, but it is also possible that the bed bugs were not harboring in the chair but climbed up into it to bite the person. Rooms, structures, can be infested as easily as pieces of furniture. The actual harborage could have been a nearby desk, a crack in the wall, another chair.

It is highly likely that anyone who sat in the chairs was exposed to bed bugs, and may possibly have taken them to other places — classrooms, library, cafeterias, dorm rooms, off-campus housing, etc. Bed bugs are hitch-hikers.

However, although the presence of bed bugs in the egg chairs suggests bed bugs are somewhere else on campus, The Daily Aztec reports having heard several bed bug reports from various residences which were found to be “unsubstantiated after discussions with the Office of Housing Administration and Student Health Services.”

Benita Mann, manager of custodial and maintenance services for the OHA, said there hasn’t been any known bed bug problem in campus housing for some time.

“Several years ago we had a problem,” Mann said, “but those buildings have since been torn down.”

Yet those bed bugs did not spontaneously appear in the egg chairs. Whoever responded to the egg chair bed bug infestation must sure have been asking himself or herself “who brought those bed bugs in, and where else did bed bugs from the chairs end up?”

If students come to the on-campus health service suspecting bed bugs, the health service wants to see an actual insect sample before they take a bed bug complaint seriously:

Dr. Gregg Lichtenstein, medical director at SHS, said complaints of bed bug bites isn’t something SHS sees very often.

“It’s not anything regular,” Lichtenstein said. “We see people who come in with bites of various sorts on an occasional basis – and most of them are, frankly, flea bites.”

Lichtenstein said that student inquiries about bed bug bites are rare, and no one can actually recall seeing a bed bug being brought in to confirm a diagnosis.

While it is absolutely true that one cannot diagnose bed bugs based on skin reactions, it is also absolutely true that it is difficult — except in heavy infestations — to catch a bed bug.

Students simply cannot be expected to find, catch, and bring in a bed bug sample.

Instead, when bed bugs are suspected, the room should be inspected, either by a trained pest professional willing to spend a lot of time doing so, or perhaps by a bed bug sniffing dog.

Lichtenstein also misunderstands the health problems posed by bed bugs:

“Bed bugs are not vectors of disease. They may be annoying, but that’s about it.”

Yes, bed bugs are not known vectors of disease. But bed bugs are more than annoying. They can trouble students (who may have difficulty getting help, especially if evidence is not obvious). They can make people lose sleep and create stress. This in addition to skin reactions from bed bug bites which vary from nothing to severe. And in very, very few cases, people have had life-threatening allergic reactions to bed bug bites.

Not only do colleges need to react well to suspected bed bug infestations. Colleges also need to be proactive against bed bugs.

Here’s why: we are told that as many as 70% of the population may not react to bed bug bites (per Dr. Jerome Goddard the state medical entomologist with the Mississippi Department of Health in Jackson, Mississippi); this means many people may not suspect they have a bed bug problem until it is very far advanced — so far advanced as to be visually obvious, even in daytime.

And if your bed bug infestation has gotten to that point, bed bugs may have already spread beyond that particular room.

College officials need to understand that it is hard to see a bed bug or catch it in the act, since they generally feed in the wee small hours, and are designed to hide between meals in tight cracks, undetected.

They also need to understand that bed bugs are a problem no one should have to put up with — even if they are not yet known to spread disease.

Finally — and the article does not engage with this issue at all — college officials need to realize that bed bugs travel off-campus too.

Students exposed to bed bugs may bring bed bugs home from campus, causing their parents expensive problems of bed bug detection and treatment. And other students will just as surely bring bed bugs onto campus, from hotels or from home. Faculty and staff will likely do so too. Bed bugs are a pest of exposure, and no one is immune.

Since bed bugs have come back with such a vengeance in society at large, having bed bugs enter a college campus is inevitable. Being reactive is not enough, given the problems of quickly detecting bed bugs before they spread around. And college administrators who realize this, and are proactive, have a better chance of getting bed bugs under control.

Ultimately, I have a hunch that a good proactive and reactive bed bug program may seem expensive at first, but will save money in the long run, over other approaches.

To read more about how colleges are dealing with bed bugs on campus, see this post which considers the model of Texas A&M, which proactively uses bed bug sniffing dogs to detect bed bug problems before students do, and TempAir to treat bed bugs in one shot with thermal remediation.

Heat also features at the University of Florida, where mattresses and other infested items are heated in a makeshift oven, as part of bed bug treatment, according to this article frem Channel 2 in Charleston.Similar Posts:

City of Berkeley spends $51K to “keep bed bugs under control” at one city-funded shelter

nobugsonme — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:03:44 +0000

The City of Berkeley funds 1/3 of the $600K per year costs of the Men’s Overnight Shelter. And this article in InsideBayArea.com notes the city was to vote Monday night on whether to approve the $51K to “replace carpets with tile or linoleum, replace cloth chairs with plastic ones, encase beds in vinyl covers and buy an industrial dryer for clothing and bedding.”

Mandatory showers and the washing of clothing of incoming guests is an essential part of the shelter’s new plan.

Shelter guests have been bitten so badly that they’ve had to be hospitalized, some multiple times. And at least one shelter guest who was thrown out for complaining about bed bugs (when staff were not as well-informed about the problem as they are now) describes how much better it is to sleep rough in the park, rather than under the conditions of a serious bed bug infestation.

What is most distressing is that the Berkeley Food and Housing Project does not expect to get rid of their bed bug problem. They only hope to get it under control:

The city of Berkeley is planning to spend $51,000 to control an infestation of bedbugs at the Men’s Overnight Shelter downtown that has sent numerous homeless clients to the hospital for treatment.

And what’s worse, officials say there is no end in sight.

“They’re not going to be eradicated, we can only control them,” said Geoff Green, associate director of the Berkeley Food and Housing Project, which runs the shelter.

It’s a realistic approach for shelters in this day and age. But it is extremely sobering.

(No update yet on whether the city’s funding vote went through.)Similar Posts:

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People with bed bugs featured in “Grant a Wish” columns

nobugsonme — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:20:48 +0000

Both the San Jose Mercury News and the Stamford Advocate have a feature where they identify people in the community needing donors to “grant a wish” this holiday season.

The San Jose Mercury article I mentioned yesterday (about the San Jose Family Shelter) also describes a “Wish Book” request from the shelter:

Some of the mattresses and box springs had to go. But it’s been too expensive to trash all the wooden bunk beds and bed frames, which the bugs love to burrow in. Instead, the shelter crew has been taking apart the frames, spraying them down and letting the sun bake the creatures out of hiding, then spraying again.

For now, the bedbugs seem to have gone on hiatus, but [shelter executive director Trish] Crowder isn’t taking chances. She’s asking Wish Book readers to help her nonprofit buy heavy-duty metal beds — 70 bunks ($300 each) and 35 double beds ($300 each) and with mattresses for each ($100) — along with zip-up vinyl mattress covers ($15 each) and cotton mattress covers ($15 each).

This wish list roundup from the Stamford Advocate describes a woman needing assistance due to bed bugs,

No. 57: A recent bout with bedbugs has left Betty, 82, without a couch or comfortable chair in her apartment. A gift of $500 would allow her to replace the furniture she has lost.

If you’re in a position to help, then you can find the information on doing so by clicking the links to the paper in question. The main reason for my post, however, is to note that these requests give the public a small sense of the economic hit bed bugs can cause — beyond the cost of actual treatment — to those affected.

In these tough economic times, bed bugs can easily cause a person or an organization that is struggling financially to go over the deep end. Or at least to go without. Most people suffering from the financial effects of bed bug treatment, or related expenses (furniture replacement, commodity fumigation, moving), have nowhere to go to ask for help.

If we’re going to fight for change, people who have not had bed bugs need to be aware of the hardships — financial, emotional, and health-related stresses bed bugs cause to sufferers.Similar Posts:

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San Jose Family Shelter bed bug-free. For now, at least.

nobugsonme — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 05:22:04 +0000

Executive Director of the San Jose Family Shelter, Trish Crowder, told the San Jose Mercury News that the shelter she runs is currently bed bug-free, after battling bed bugs on and off for three years.

They are bed bug-free right now, which makes the shelter unique among shelters:

“It’s really, really scary,” Crowder says, “how few of us there are.”

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Bakersfield family battles bed bugs

nobugs — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:31:06 +0000

A Bakersfield, California family is suffering from bed bugs. KBAK News 29 reports:

Kay Hammer lives in the 1900 block of Hasti-Acres Drive, and says the family started getting bitten shortly after they moved in.

The Hammer family may not be the only ones in the building suffering from bed bug bites:

Eyewitness News talked to several other neighbors in the apartment building, and some reported they had suffered with bug bites. The spokeswoman from the health department said those could be bed bug bites.

The problem has been expensive and disruptive to their lives, as it is for so many:

The Hammers now have almost no furniture in the living room. They sleep on air mattresses, except for one new bed that appears to be clear of bed bugs so far. Kay Hammer hopes the landlord will get the building professionally treated to get rid of the bed bugs.

“I can’t move,” said Hammer. “If I move I take them with me. So I’m just kind of in limbo right now.”

The article also contained a clue on what to do if you are a tenant in Bakersfield with bed bugs, and the landlord is not treating:

Hammer contacted Bakersfield City Code Compliance, but Officer Wanda Neal said her department refers any bed bug cases to the health department or professional pest control companies.

“Bed bugs are something that’s not easily visible,” said Neal. “So that’s why we’re not professionals, and we leave that up to the Health Department where they’ve been trained — and the professionals, where they’ve been trained.”

Neal said Code Compliance can send a letter to the landlord and tenant if there is an alleged bed bug infestation. Neal said that had been done in the case of the Hammer apartment.

You can read the entire article or watch the video here.Similar Posts:

Apartment Therapy on bed bugs, bed bug sniffing dogs

nobugsonme — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:00:38 +0000

Apartment Therapy/San Francisco has a new post mentioning AT blogger Sarahh’s encounter with Mr. Cimex Lectularius in a Santa Cruz motel (yikes!) and alerting readers to the existence of bed bug sniffing dogs.

For those of you who are wondering, we were lucky not to have brought any bedbugs back with us to our home from our unfortunate, and very unromantic, trip to Santa Cruz. We shook out all of our clothes and luggage and immediately drove back to the Bay Area where we laundered our clothing in very hot water and crossed our fingers for a few weeks that we hadn’t towed a few of those famous hitchhiking critters with us. We were lucky!

Lucky, indeed!

Sarahh also asks readers for input, if they’ve used bed bug k9s:

We love this [bed bug sniffing dog] idea because you can actually pinpoint the areas in a home where these tiny bloodsuckers are hiding, without having to spray dangerous chemicals throughout your whole apartment or house. We’ve heard that one company in the Bay Area, Pestec, uses a bedbug sniffing dog detective. Has anyone had an experience with this company or any other one that uses dogs for bedbug patrol? Let’s hear your story.

Luis Agurto (president of Pestec) and his beagle Lady Bug were featured in this San Francisco Gate article from April 2007 (one of my favorite articles, but I am biased for obvious reasons!)

Although ideally, bed bug dogs can detect locations of bed bug harborages, I would not say that their use necessarily obviates the need to spray pesticides throughout the home. First, bed bug dogs are not 100% effective. They may not find all harborages. Second, residual pesticides and dusts require bed bugs to make contact with them before they will be killed. Having the stuff in places bed bugs are moving around makes killing them more likely.

Still, bed bug sniffing k9s can be a valuable asset, especially in cases where bed bugs may have been recently introduced, such as immediately following a hotel visit involving bed bug bites, or (as poor Sarahh experienced) face-to-face bed bug encounters (yes, plural). Ugh.

Apartmenttherapy.com has not covered bed bugs in any way, shape or form (that we can see) since July of 2007, when they posted part 7 of Amanda’s bed bug saga.

We love Apartment Therapy and we hope that, despite the ick factor, they will cover bed bug issues a bit more often. Because nothing messes up your cool design scheme or puts the damper on your recent nifty flea market find than an apartment full of full, green garbage bags, bursting with all your clothes, or the lingering smell of pesticides.

Thanks also to Sarahh for pointing AT readers our way!Similar Posts: