9/15/2011 Bedbug Numbers Increase In London: Home Owners Now Dealing With Increase

They’re creepy little biters and they’re everywhere – London, Bayfield, Exeter, Sarnia and Goderich.

Bed bugs are hitchhiking into hotels, apartments and houses more and more every year.

“It’s definitely increasing and it’s been increasing substantially over the last six to seven years in the London area,” said Ryan Sawyer, owner of Sawyer Pest Management.

“People don’t understand where it’s going. It appears to be getting worse every year.”

While bed bugs once were found mostly in hotels or highdensity housing, Sawyer said he receives many more calls from residents of single-family homes, townhouses and condos about them.

He has seen infestations so bad people were sleeping in their bathtubs and balconies to get away from the bugs.

“When you go into some place and people are sleeping on their balconies . . . you really have to feel for people,” he said.

Last month, a Sarnia police office responding to a call to assist a man in medical distress found bed bugs crawling on him.

This month, Lambton County council passed a motion to hold a public meeting on the growing problem. A staff report is expected next month.

Five years ago, Sawyer received one call a month from someone fearing they had bed bugs. Now, he gets two or three a day.

The story is the same at the Middlesex London Health Unit, where calls about bed bugs have doubled in two years.

Four years ago, the London Middlesex Housing Corp., pest control budget was $25,000.

Now, it’s more than $300,000 – all because of bed bugs.

“It’ll be like that for the foreseeable future,” said Derek Grater, the corporation’s acting chief executive.

The city-owned corporation has 3,000 units and the bed bug issue is “multiplying significantly,”

Grater said.

“This is a major issue for hotels and landlords,” he said.

One tenant, who asked her name not be used, said her unit has been sprayed four times for bed bugs, but the problem persists because a neighbouring unit that has bed bugs refuses to allow pest management to spray.

The woman said she and her young children have been forced to keep their belongings in garbage bags and huddle in one room to sleep. Her request to be moved has been denied, the woman said.

“I’m paying rent for all my stuff to be in garbage bags to keep away the bed bugs,” she said.

Grater said residents sometimes refuse to allow pest management in, but under Ontario law, landlords must treat a pest issue if they find one or risk being taken to court by other residents.

“To treat the unit for bed bugs is a very invasive process,” Grater said.

Professionals place finely crushed seashells, called diatomaceous earth, in the baseboards where bed bugs hide during the day.

When the bugs walk across the powder, it scratches the underside of their bodies and dehydrates them.

Another, more expensive way, to kill the bugs is through heat. Techni- cians use special equipment to quickly increase the heat in units to about 45 C for three hours, killing the bugs.

Though effective, Grater said the technique is also expensive, about quadruple the cost of diatomaceous earth.

But before any of that is done, Grater said, the largest stumbling block is preparing the unit for treatment. People have to move furniture from walls, empty dressers, launder clothing and place it all in plastic bags.

“It’s a very big process,” he said, adding some people are unable to do the preparation work.

Sawyer called the expansion of the bed bug problem “troublesome.

“The (bed bug) population’s continuing to grow and expand and hasn’t peaked out yet.”

While there’s no “magic bullet”

for treating bed bugs, Sawyer said there does need to be more education on proper pest control to cope with the problem.

Residents or homeowners need to deal with it at the first sign of a problem or if they suspect they have bed bugs to call a professional to confirm the finding.

“The quicker you can control it, the better, because their production is so high,” said Sawyer.

Females can lay between three and five eggs a day and adult bed bugs can go 13 months without a blood feeding. Younger bugs can go three months without a meal.

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