01.04.11
BedBug Blitz continues
Bustling densely populated urban epicenters with high turnovers of tourists and business travelers are among the worst sufferers. Those cities include New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., Chicago.
The state most afflicted by bed bugs is a bit of a surprise: Ohio. Three of the Buckeye state’s cities–Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton–are on the exterminators’ bed bug-infested lists.
“At this point we don’t know, nor does anyone know, why cities in Ohio seem to have a much higher influx of bed bugs per capita than larger cities,” says Orkin’s Harrison.
Never underestimate coincidence and more enthusiastic by commercial exterminators.
Reasons for bedbug blitz were discussed last year here and had to do with a couple of factors, some linked to the recession.
Bedbugs travel with people and their belongings.
Losing your job in the city, having unemployment run out, and having to move in with relatives elsewhere most probably took bedbugs everywhere, not only between urban centers but also from urban centers to smaller towns. Working the census, one could see the dislocation. And also pick up gossip about it by simply talking with apartment complex managers.
Bedbug populations also probably surged when property management companies, seeing a drop in tenancy because of the recession, cut back on pest control regimes to save money. Such decisions, in retrospect, were shortsighted.
Another factor possibly contributing to the spread of bedbugs in urban centers is also probably indirectly linked to transience in apartment complexes.
An entire service industry of cleaners, repainters, carpet-steamers and repairmen exist to renovate and perform minor carpentry and painting in the short term. When a tenant leaves, many property owners will bring in small business service workers to ready the units for new tenants. Since these workers bring tools and boxes, often spend the day in an empty unit, and travel from unit to unit across a city, they most probably are excellent vectors for bedbugs.
Bedbugs are very small and, annoyingly, while no one is looking, they will crawl into boxes and clumps of tarpaulin or rags left about in a unit. Particularly if left over night.
When the workmen come back the next day, or gather up their materials at the end of the day and take them to the truck, the bedbug (or plural) goes along for the ride to the next place.
It has also been DD’s experience that some property managers, plagued by bedbug eradication costs, have attempted to shift the responsibility onto tenants.
The last thing one wants to do when dealing with transmitted infestations is to blame and penalize those who are afflicted. Which is what such riders are designed to do.
It works this way.
The tenant has to sign a rider on their contract certifying that they guarantee that their belongings are free of bedbugs when they move in. Of course, there is no way to do this. However, it is coupled to legal language which then holds the tenant liable for any subsequent bedbug infestation when they are in the unit.
Since professional exterminations and mandatory damage or partial to total elimination of key furnishings — like mattresses — are unpalatable or too expensive to many people living in apartment units, they have no incentive to report bedbugs to property managers for removal.
In fact, the implied penalties — punishments — discourage them from doing so.
In such cases people may be more likely to undertake their own amateur attempts at pest control or just engage in extended battle with the insects while learning to live with them.
While some tenants would invariably report bedbugs and absorb liability others would not. And it would complicate efforts to totally eliminate bedbugs, since getting rid of the insects in one unit would not prevent them from reinfestation of cleansed units from other infested apartments in the same building.
Bedbugs being able to crawl through various conduits, you see.
The bedbug blitz has also led to annoying and repetitive stories on job opportunities having to do with the acquisition of bedbug sniffing dogs.
Dick Destiny’s Bedbugs tune — in mp3. Do give it a listen. It was quite the hit at our pre-Xmas show in Pasadena. (I considered making a video from all the bedbug footage now available. After an hour of viewing what was available on YouTube, a certain queasiness and headache had set in.)
Previously — on bedbugs.