By Elizabeth Gibson
The Columbus Dispatch
FRANKLIN COUNTY, Ohio — Move over frogs and locusts, the bedbugs are coming.
“Ladies and gentlemen, they’re here,” said Bill Willis, an lawyer who handles landlord-tenant disputes. “I field three to five bedbug problems a day. I want it to stop.”
With concern mounting over the resurgence of bedbugs, the Franklin County Board of Health is establishing an interagency bedbug task force for central Ohio.
The task force would look at issues such as how best to handle complaints, monitor bedbug populations and educate the public.
Pesticides drove bed bugs from the U.S. in the 1950s, but they’ve scuttled back in with international travelers. Central Ohio is trying to avoid an epidemic.
Franklin County dealt with its first major infestation this year, according to county officials.
“Kids were getting bit up,” resident Jeffrey McCarey said. “I’ve thrown out couches, a love seat, a lounge chair, a bed, a rug, comforters, sheets and pillow cases. All of that.”
Bedbugs infested a third of Yearling Green’s 146 low-income apartments in Whitehall. After more than a year of complaints and four pest control companies, they are still trying to kill the parasites, said Charlie Broschart, supervisor for Franklin County community environmental health.
County officials held an educational summit on bedbugs today that brought together social workers, landlords, pest controllers and school representatives. Health and code-enforcement officials came from state, county and city governments.
Guests from Cincinnati arrived and had attendees squirming in their seats with horror stories.
Every fire station in Cincinnati has bedbugs, the city has spent more than $10,000 on protective suits for employees and a room in an assisted-living complex had 30,000 bedbugs in one room, said Ken Sharkey of the Cincinnati Health Department.
“He got my attention,” Clinton Township Fire Chief John Harris said. “I thought it was scary.”
Harris said he’ll consider training township employees about bedbugs. A paramedic kneeling on a victim’s infested carpet or a criminal in the back of a squad car could carry bedbugs right to a station.
Columbus has seen outbreaks across the city, from homeless shelters to university dorms to $1,500-per-month apartments.
“We really have not been prepared,” said Sue Carter of Columbus Public Health Code Enforcement. “We need an action plan.”
Killing bedbugs is expensive and labor-intensive, and embarrassed residents often keep quiet until after an infestation has spread out of control, landlords said.
Willis said the Columbus Apartment Association is encouraging landlords to have tenants sign papers saying that their home was pest-free at move in and that their previous residence was bug-free. The attorney said his clients, Columbus apartment building owners, are spending a combined $1.5 million on bedbugs a year.
Ohio State University entomology professor Susan Jones urged people to help by checking hotel rooms for bedbugs and being wary about furniture on the curb.
“Either you nip it in the bud or it becomes your problem,” she said. “They’re living on blood. And we all have blood rich and poor.”