Health department inspectors were called to the East State Street and Bell School Road hotel after a guest found the tiny bugs crawling in the sheets of his bed. The inspectors closed 56 out of 108 rooms.

Dixon resident Robert McLean said he first spotted the little brown bugs on his sheets when he woke up Friday. Initially, he saw three or four bugs, but he said a search of the mattress revealed countless more, some of which he collected on pieces of clear tape.

“It was like a Halloween nightmare,” McLean said. “You almost want to bring your own bedding from now on.”

Unfortunately, bringing your own bedding will not prevent bed bugs. You’d have to bring your own building, frankly, and set it up over there, away from the hotel.

McLean said he reported the bugs to the hotel’s front desk, who sent a maintenance crew to look at the bugs. They took pictures, McLean said.

The hotel shut down the 56-room wing for 48 hours, during treatment, and will keep the room the guest was in closed for 5 days. However, we know that one traditional bed bug treatment is rarely enough. I hope the Red Roof Inn is being very aggressive with treatments. I would love to hear from PCOs as to what protocol they would follow in a hotel. After all, when individuals have bed bugs at home, we have to sleep in the room to draw the bed bugs out to cross the pesticides. If hotels are using traditional spray treatments, won’t customers be forced to sleep with bed bugs?!?

One also has to wonder how many other people were bitten in this hotel, and reported the bed bug bites. Or did not realize it and took them home. Could this much of a hotel be affected and the hotel be completely unaware of it?

Winnebago County appears to be inviting anyone with bed bugs in that area to call and report them to the Health Department:

[Winnebago County Health Department spokeswoman Sue] Fuller said anyone who finds bed bugs are asked to call the Winnebago County Health Department at 815-720-4100 to file a complaint.

This is interesting — I have not heard many city health departments invite such calls.

This story reinforces my idea that those who find bed bugs in hotel rooms should not simply tell the management, and then post a review on tripadvisor.com to warn others. They should also call the local health department (a number they can get via the room’s phone book, before they flee). Health departments may not consider bed bugs a health risk, but they should. And if enough people call, they may take action.

Update (11/2): the Rockford Register Star now reports the rooms are now reopened–except for the one where the bed bugs are found.

• Schools in Bracken County, KY shut down due to bed bugs
• Disney guests paid off to keep quiet about bed bugs
• Bed bugs in hotels: how to report (and check up on) bed bug infestations
• Tampa Bay mental health facility closed for bed bug treatment

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Calvin Merritt’s problems at Hillrise Apartments are pretty simple.

“Mostly bugs, roaches and all that…”

The “all that” is bed bugs. Dead ones were easy to find under Calvin’s mattress, and piles of them behind the bed. When exterminators come in to spray here, their work’s easy to see, pesticide stains run down Calvin’s walls. Calvin pays 313 dollars a month for this one bedroom…what little furniture he had was mostly pitched, because it was infested.

Calvin Merritt, Resident: “I done lost everything got here, my couch, my other chairs, all the stuff I had was new, I had to get rid of all of that.”

At the other end of the hall, Jeanette Jessie doesn’t have any bedbugs, but she worries about them just the same.

Jeanette Jessie, Resident: “They just spread them from one end of the building to the other, this is crazy, get this place cleaned up, spray it at one time and get rid of this mess.”

It sounds a bit like the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA in Washington DC, Halcyon House in Denver, and Warren Towers in East Moline, Illinois. Elderly people, disabled people, and anyone in low-income housing is being dealt a raw deal when it comes to getting rid of bed bugs. Let’s face it, bed bugs are expensive to treat. They’re also a rather sudden problem no one was expecting and no one has budgeted for.

Bed bugs are difficult to treat, too. Traditional treatments require multiple pest control visits at short intervals. Residents must prepare for treatment, which can be a lengthy process and costly too (especially for those on a fixed income).

However, make no mistake: non-aggressive treatment (treating only some of the infested units, treating at too-long intervals, or not coming as many times as needed), waiting for tenants who might be unaware they have bed bugs to report them, and not providing assistance with preparation costs and physical labor–all of these reactions from landlords and housing managers mean that bed bugs will be around longer, spread into more units, and cost much more to get rid of.

It just does not make sense on any practical level to not be aggressive, thorough, and quick to treat bed bugs in a building you are responsible for. It is simply a display of ignorance about the nature of this beast.

We can’t entirely blame landlords for this ignorance; none of us were expecting bed bugs. But we need to educate the public about the signs of bed bugs, and we need to educate professionals in all walks of life (from those who provide housing, to hospitality services, to health care, education, and on and on) about the need for a bed bug protocol which includes both proactive searching for signs of bed bugs, and swift reactions to any bed bug signs or sightings.

Too many people seem to be hoping they’ll just go away. Good luck with that. In the meantime:

Channel 12 reports,

Officials from the Cincinnati Health Department tell us they’ll soon be taking a closer look at conditions in the apartments.

I love the Cincinnati Health Department. But you knew that.

• Cincinnati Establishes Bed Bug Furniture Pick-Up Procedures and Hotline
• Cincinnati fights bed bugs, declares some success
• Cincinnati: “best weapon against bed bugs is … education”
• Cincinnati government discovers bed bugs are not easily treated, news at 11

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There’s currently an outbreak there, and a hundred people have reported itchy red welts at area emergency rooms in the last week. Here’s a news clip from the Chicago Tribune.

Itch mite bites last 10-14 days and itch mites will not infest your person or your home. If you have not spent time in a wooded area, or if you have other signs of bed bugs, or if your bites persist beyond the next two weeks or continue to get worse (without you visiting the forest preserves again), you should be very proactive about seeking an experienced PCO who can inspect for bed bugs. Itch mites are a very specific condition, so read the article and watch the video and consider whether that’s a likely culprit.

We don’t normally report on “other conditions” here at bedbugger.com. But in the last few days, participants on the forums have reported visiting doctors who claimed to have the same itchy welts. And I was starting to worry bed bugs in Chicago were even more widespread than I had thought! Well, at least in many cases, it appears to be another cause.

But consider this: at least some of those 100 emergency room visitors will doubtless be suffering from bed bugs and thinking they have itch mites. Be alert, and proceed with caution.

• Lou’s bed bug bite photos
• Presidential Towers sold, with free bed bugs! Doctors and bedbugs (again)
• World exclusive: Bedbuggers experiment with being bitten, on purpose! (Part 4)
• FAQ: Bed bugs are crawling on me all the time. I am being bitten all day long, no matter where I go!

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Less than a week after the infestation began Thor figured out that the nightstand was the culprit.

“So the $10 nightstand is now about a $3,000 nightstand,” Thor said after having spent thousands to have the bugs eradicated from her home.

Thor says at times she thought the bed bugs might actually take over her house.

“We really thought about boarding up and just moving,” she said.

Instead, Thor and her family had to leave their home for a day while it was sealed and treated.

The description says they evacuated for a day while the home was “sealed and treated”; this implies they had their home gassed with Vikane, though the article does not state this directly, and there may be other possibilities (such as thermal treatment).

It won’t be long before “flea markets” become known as “bed bug markets.”

• More on flea market nightstand: new ozone treatment for bed bugs
• Comedian moves into NJ Ikea store
• Given that they spread like wildfire, why did bed bugs take 30 years to come back?
• Bed bugs and marketing (again)

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You may recall how Dr. Michael Potter comments on thermal treatments for bed bugs:

STRUCTURAL HEATING. Elevating the temperature within buildings has been used to eradicate pests ranging from grain insects to termites. Structural and containerized heat treatments are also being developed for bed bugs. Companies such as TempAir (Burnsville, Minn., 888/838-4035) have begun licensing the patented technology to interested pest control firms. Portable heaters and fans are used to gradually heat the air within rooms to about 125 to 130°F while monitoring with strategically placed sensors. A licensing and royalty fee is typically required along with the initial equipment purchase.

While heat treatments hold promise, eliminating infestations by raising the temperature within a building may not be so easy. As observed with cockroaches, bed bugs may seek out cooler areas as the temperature within rooms builds. Whether some bugs will be able to survive by moving to cooler locations (including adjacent units) still needs further study.

TempAir, the company mentioned by Potter, sells machines for thermal remediation of bed bugs, such as smaller portable machines for pest control, and little trailers that bake your bed bugs.

This describes how the process works. Please do not try to replicate this in your home — it is dangerous in terms of fire, may well be illegal, and may well cause your bed bugs to thoroughly spread throughout your home or into walls, making them harder to eradicate.

TempAir does not offer the actual services, though. You may be able to call them to find a PCO or operator in your area. Apparently Excelsis is using bed bug dogs to find bed bugs and TempAir heat technology to bake them to death in Chicago.

Last year, one of their machines was tested by Purdue researchers. I hope we will see the results soon.

• The Wall Street Journal on “new” bed bug-fighting tactics
• The iceman cometh.
• New Vancouver building installs “sauna” for decontaminating bed bug-infested items
• Cooper Pest evaluates ozone treatments for bed bugs, finds current methods ineffective

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This article in the Quad-Cities Online reported yesterday on bed bug infestations in a public housing complex in East Moline, Illinois. The reporter quotes one resident who has been battling bed bugs since fall.

“I work too. My tax dollars are going to support places like this (government run low-income housing). If people knew how disgusting this is, I’m sure they’d be upset,” said a resident of the Joseph Fulton Homes. The woman asked to remain anonymous.

Interestingly, a number of comments to the article also note that low-income folks should not have to live like that. At least one commenter (going by the name “some anonymous person”) mentions that “only the poor have to live like this.”

Well, not exactly. While it’s true that in this case, it’s a low-income residence, sadly, people of every social class and walk of life are having to deal with bed bugs. Many, many people we hear from at bedbugger.com — low-income, moderate-income and middle-class– have a problem getting their landlords to treat the problem promptly and effectively. The rich are perhaps in the best situation, since they have more possibility of moving, but this problem is not easy for anyone, and everyone who suffers from bed bugs suffers and takes a hit. And it can afflict anyone at any time.

We need better government support for fighting bed bugs, because nobody should have to suffer this problem for long (and a week is too long).

A second local public housing complex, a senior apartment building called Warren Towers, also has units with bed bug infestations, a story which was covered by the Quad-Cities Online on May 30th.

In other news, even though I have a google alert which tells me when people mention bed bugs in the news or in their blogs, I don’t usually mention non-bed-bug-blogs in our news round-ups. There are just too many people blogging their infestations on a daily basis to keep up.

But today, one caught my eye: this professional blog at LibraryJournal.com, suggests that folks are starting to talk about their bed bug infestations not just amongst their nearest and dearest, or in the workplace, but amongst colleagues they may not know well. That’s good news: talking about bed bugs means more people learn about the problem, how to spot it, and its likelihood of appearing in their lives, too.

Bravo to Heather McCormack at Library Journal, and Heather–we hope your Brooklyn bed bugs are on their way out!

Meanwhile, Lisa Hoffman’s Scripps News article on bed bugs (the one also published in the Knoxville News) continues to make the rounds of syndication, now in the Albuquerque Tribune.

Next, for anyone in Boston who does not have to work next Wednesday, the Allston Brighton Community Development Corporation is having a Bed Bug Conference.

2nd Greater Boston Bed Bug Conference: Extermination and Legislation
Wednesday, June 13, 2007, 8:30AM - 3:00PM

There is still time to register! Registraton is $25.00 and includes lunch and refreshments. (Click the link above to get to the ABCDC site and download the registration form.)

Sponsored by the Greater Boston Bedbug Task Force, this event will provide updated information about the bed bug outbreak to more than 200 exterminators, inspectors, health providers, property managers/landlords, tenants and housing advocates, as well as members of the general public.

There’s also information at the same link for local residents to apply for a grant from the ABCDC to fight bed bugs in your home. Allston Brighton residents take note! We’re big fans of the ABCDC’s bed bug-fighting attempts (some of which are mentioned here), and we’d be glad to hear about other community organizations that are trying to help people with bed bugs, or help people avoid getting bed bugs in the first place.

And finally, today some tenants in a Jamaica, Queens apartment set off a roach bomb which exploded, harming them and damaging their apartment and belongings.

Authorities say the explosion shattered the windows of Apartment 4E at 164-30 Hillside Avenue just after 12:30 p.m. Thursday.

Some residents inside the apartment were overcome, and at least two were taken to the hospital.

The force of the explosion reportedly blew pieces of the fourth-floor window onto a construction shed and the street.

Fire officials said the roach bomb explosion may have been sparked by a pilot light or a refrigerator compressor.

In case the fact that bug bombs do not work to rid your apartment of bed bugs did not dissuade you from using one, they’re also apparently potentially dangerous.
ABC 7’s photo shows what looks to be much of the apartment’s contents pushed up against the (blown-out) window.

I realize the news reports this as a roach bomb, but since there are (for good reason) no over-the-counter bed bug bombs, since we know people attempt to use bombs made for other pests to eradicate bed bugs, and since Queens is experiencing a lot of bed bug infestations, I do have to wonder if that might have been the case here.

Don’t try that at home, kids!

• craigslist: An Open Letter to my Bedbugs
• Toronto Star: Within five years, bedbugs “will be more common than mice, roaches, carpenter ants”
• Surrey, B.C. public housing infested with bed bugs
• More bad news about Denver’s bed bug-infested Halcyon House

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Why the fear? Well, one reason people have mentioned many times in the blog’s comments is that in many cities, landlords “blacklist” tenants. Although “we’re not supposed to know about it,” and its often illegal, landlords in some places can allegedly check a list to see which tenants have complained to the housing board, taken landlords to court, filed violations, or just been “a pain” generally.

Up until now, as people have escaped from bad bed bug apartments, often at great cost, their only way of warning future tenants was to post their infested address on Bed Bug City, or Bed Bug Registry, two sites that register bed bug infested rental apartments, and hotels.

Those sites are very useful and people should report their addresses to both sites. Why? Well, I saw a building next to my friend’s apartment on one site, and the building on the other side of hers on the other. Neither site was telling the whole story. And the sites are full of reports of adjacent or nearby addresses, a reminder of just how common it is for people to pick up infested stuff on the curb, and take it home. But I digress.

Now there’s another option for tenants. The playing field may be slightly leveled by apartment ratings websites, which allow users to post reviews of apartments.

Here’s an example: myhood.ca. Here, Toronto tenants can complain of problems in the properties they’ve rented, warning other tenants.

I looked at the Bed Bug Registry and found a reported address in Toronto: 321 Sherbourne St., Toronto, where someone reported having bed bugs as of 1/15/2007. (Remember, these reports are not checked, so this is just an allegation as far as we’re concerned.) Meanwhile, two apartments in this building were listed at myhood.ca (a 1BR and a 2BR). Neither had any reviews at the time of this writing.

Another example: mega-apartment complex Presidential Towers (where this Bedbugger lived for a few months, 9 years ago!) in Chicago, the focus of several bed bug lawsuits. Look at the listings on ApartmentRatings.com. Marvel at the many negative bed bug reviews, and the entry for 4/4/07, who actually had bed bugs in their unit and wants to get back in (not allergic, I guess?)

On the Bed Bug Registry, meanwhile, there’s one entry for Presidential Towers (aka 555 W. Madison, Chicago), here. Again, these are just allegations, though in this case, supported by lawsuits.

The bottom line is that these listings are not foolproof and they’re not verified (though it can be said that if landlords have a blacklist, that’s not verified either.) Tenants are consumers and renting an apartment is one of the costliest decisions one can make–especially if the hidden costs include not just “first, last, and security,” but a course of 5 bed bug treatments, or even paying money to move to a new apartment and throwing out a lot of stuff.

It would be much better if we could get away from the blame game. If bed bugs were treated like an environmental and public health problem, rather than a shameful secret tenants and landlords try to hide from one another, we’d all be better off.

The government could require PCOs to register all locations receiving treatment, and could assist those unable to pay (just as they do in other public crises, like mudslides, floods, and tornados.) It may sound extreme to treat bed bugs like a natural disaster, but the truth is, if they were addressed as such, they could be brought under greater control. Instead, they’re spreading.

And while landlords and hotels would no doubt balk at an official registry, there would be a lot less shame when everyone saw just how widespread things had become.

• Use bed bug registries and warn others about infested buildings and hotels!
• bed bug registries
• bedbugregistry.com is working now: report your bed bug infestations!
• The strange case of bed bugs in Bushwick

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For those of you who don’t know, webpages can tell where you’re coming from (though not very specifically). They know the location of your ISP. For most people, this comes up as somewhere near where they live, though it’s not always precise and sometimes it’s just the country. It also tells the webmaster what internet browser you use (Go Firefox!) and whether you like Macs or Windows machines. No, I do not know your name, or where you live, don’t worry!

This may all seem very “meta,” so far, but we know that our readership consists of four kinds of people:

a) People who have, or think they have, or recently had, bed bugs.
b) People whose work makes them concerned about bed bugs (pest control professionals, entomologists, politicians, landlords, hotel managers, social service agencies, government officials, are just some sectors that I have heard from).
c) People who have heard about bed bugs and are concerned, and want to know more.

I think that group (a) is in the majority, and although most people don’t comment, most commenters fit in group a. In any case, the Bedbugger.com readership is a map of bed bug concern, and you’d be pretty safe betting its a map of where bed bugs are popping up–with the caveat, of course, that our site pops up more in US search engines than those abroad, and also that our readers are overwhelmingly English-speakers, though we have dreams of breaking down those linguistic barriers!

This is where the last 89 readers were reading the blog (circa 6:30 this evening):

1. San Diego, California, United States
2. Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom
3. Walden, New York, United States
4. Long Island City, New York, United States
5. New York, New York, United States
6. Plattekill, New York, United States
7. Hull, Quebec, Canada
8. Durant, Iowa, United States
9. Miamiville, Ohio, United States
10. Gibraltar
11. Calgary, Alberta, Canada
12. Boston, Massachusetts, United States
13. Humble, Texas, United States
14. Germantown, Maryland, United States
15. Rowland Heights, California, United States
16. New York, New York, United States
17. New York, New York, United States
18. Hadley, Kentucky, United States
19. Buffalo, New York, United States
20. Hveragerði, Arnessysla, Iceland
21. Pine Falls, Manitoba, Canada
22. Livonia, Michigan, United States
23. Bayside, New York, United States
24. Woodhaven, New York, United States
25. Denver, Colorado, United States
26. New York, New York, United States
27. United States
28. Waterloo, Quebec, Canada
29. Los Angeles, California, United States
30. Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
31. Santa Maria, California, United States
32. Beamsville, Ontario, Canada
33. Kansas City, Missouri, United States
34. Corona, New York, United States
35. Barker, Texas, United States
36. Readville, Massachusetts, United States
37. Palo Alto, California, United States
38. Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
39. Mill Valley, California, United States
40. Ridgewood, New York, United States
41. Mehama, Oregon, United States
42. San Francisco, California, United States
43. Feeding Hills, Massachusetts, United States
44. Swedesburg, Iowa, United States
45. Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
46. West New York, New Jersey, United States
47. Lancaster, Blackpool, United Kingdom
48. New York, New York, United States
49. Miami, Florida, United States
50. Anaheim, California, United States
51. Harrow, Harrow, United Kingdom
52. Wilsonville, Oregon, United States
53. Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
54. Forest Hill, Ontario, Canada
55. Wayne, New Jersey, United States
56. Kecskemét, Bacs-Kiskun, Hungary
57. Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada
58. Short Hills, New Jersey, United States
59. Seattle, Washington, United States
60. Jackson, Mississippi, United States
61. Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States
62. Secaucus, New Jersey, United States
63. Long Island City, New York, United States
64. United States
65. Tranbjerg, Arhus, Denmark
66. Naples, Florida, United States
67. San Francisco, California, United States
68. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
69. Gainesville, Florida, United States
70. Edmond, Oklahoma, United States
71. Hempstead, New York, United States
72. Everett, Massachusetts, United States
73. United States
74. United States
75. São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
76. Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
77. Bismarck, North Dakota, United States
78. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
79. Downers Grove, Illinois, United States
80. United States
81. Bend, Oregon, United States
82. Henderson, Nevada, United States
83. Montréal, Quebec, Canada
84. Sunnyvale, California, United States
85. Arlington, Texas, United States
86. United States
87. New York, New York, United States
88. Fairfax, Virginia, United States
89. Rochester, New York, United States

You might expect that most of these people came from the bed bug hot spots. We get lots of readers from Chicago, Boston, NYC, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto. So it’s surprising that 89 people came from such a wide variety of places:

68 from at least 33 states (only 12 of these from NYC, San Francisco or Boston);
11 from 5 provinces in Canada;
4 from 4 cities in the UK (none of them London);
1 person each from: Hungary, Ireland, Denmark, Brazil, Iceland, and Gilbraltar.

In New York state, 10 of the 17 visitors were from NYC. And of the 10 in NYC, 60% were in Queens, where, unlike Staten Island, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan, each neighborhood has its own name used for the purposes of the postal service: Ridgewood, Corona, Long Island City, Woodhaven, Bayside, New York, are all in Queens, and part of NYC. Remember the Queens Gazette speculating that Queens was the “ground zero for NYC’s bed bugs? Well, I am still not sure it’s true, but it seems plausible: we certainly have a lot of Bedbuggers in Queens.

I peeked at the traffic report for the site because I have a geeky side and I find it interesting to know where you’re coming from. However, looking at it can tell us something about the bed bug problem. This is not a scientific study, but just a snapshot of our site’s traffic does tell you who’s worried about bed bugs (and, we can assume, many are worried because they have bed bugs).

Most of those cities were not capitals or the biggest cities in their regions or countries. A small percentage are from those places you think are hot spots. It should serve as a warning sign that bed bugs, like Bedbuggers, are everywhere, and way more spread out than you thought.

• California fights bed bugs: good news from the golden state
• Portsmouth NH’s Health Officer proactive about bed bugs
• Comedian moves into NJ Ikea store
• Tracing the path of the epidemic

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This issue is relevant to all tenants with bed bugs. If landlords had to tell neighbors when one tenant had bed bugs, it might mean more people get treatment more quickly (which would be a good thing for landlords, in the end, because the problem could be treated before their entire buildings get infested). It would help tenants, because they could be warned (and as we know, some people don’t suffer from bites, and so may have no other warning.) In the end, it would lessen the spread of the bugs in a building and, by extension, in the larger community.

And though no one will want to admit their building has bed bugs, in the end, it might mean more people talk about this and the stigma is lessened. You can’t run or hide from bed bugs, so you might as well talk about them.

Previous Presidential Towers posts are here and here. And there are hundreds more on the internets.

• Bed bugs invade Chicago’s Presidential Towers, and another Vancouver Island detox
• Escaping tenants leaving crumbs, marking the bed bug trail
• FAQ: Where can I read about bed bug lawsuits? Can you help me find a lawyer?
• Bowling Green Towers: residents organize to demand proper bed bug treatment in low-income building

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What I especially liked about the ABC report was the newsreel which included news on the lawsuit, as well as wonderful interview-let with a Chicago dermatologist (the article says “skin specialist”):

“I think I have seen a small increase,” said Dr. Clarence Brown, Rush University Medical Center.

Dr. Brown, a skin specialist, said that those who have been bittern have itchy swollen bites for days, especially along their veins. Many people have trouble understanding it’s bedbugs.

“They’re confused, actually, why do I have this rash? It itches so much. Where did it come from? They are skeptical when you convey that you are convinced that this is actually insect bites and that bedbugs might be one of the possibilities,” said Dr. Brown.

Yes folks, contrary to what many Bedbuggers have experienced (i.e. doctors who insist we don’t have bed bugs), this doctor has trouble convincing his clients that they do. I guess that’s progress.

I know Jess has a few things to say about the goings-on in Chicago, so I’ll hand over to her.

• Good news, Chicagoland: you might have itch mites
• teaching doctors to diagnose bed bug bites
• Barona Resort and Casino bed bug lawsuit
• landlord’s duty to tell prospective tenants about bed bugs?

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