WAVE 3 TV Louisville, KY | Apartment dwellers at risk for bed bugs

Apartment dwellers at risk for bed bugs

By Janelle MacDonald - bio | email
Posted By Charles Gazaway - email

LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) - They are showing up in hotel rooms and homes across the country: tiny little bed bugs. Once you get them, it can be an incredibly large task to get rid of them.

At a bright time in Liz Druschke's life with a new baby on the way, a few dark specks appeared on the horizon at her next door neighbor's apartment. "She called us over one day and showed them to us," Druschke said.

They were bed bugs and the display was a warning. "She wanted us to be aware that they were there and could come through the walls and the ceilings and over to our place," said Druschke.

At the time, Druschke's apartment was clear, but then, she said, "weeks later we found bed bugs living and crawling in our newborn son's bassinet."

Both the Metro Health Department and Department of Inspections said bed bug infestations are on the rise in Metro Louisville.

Shirish Phulgaonkar, vice president of A-1 Pest Control, said apartment dwellers are at risk. "They are nomadic in nature. They will not generally stay in one place. They will tend to hitch a ride."

In apartments, that means crawling through walls and on pipes into nearby units. "It has no correlation with sanitation," said Phulgaonkar.

While bed bugs can show up anywhere, once they've made themselves at home in your home, they're tough to get rid of. According to Phulgaonkar, it generally it takes three to four treatments.

"We had to throw away our bed, we had to get rid of our vacuum cleaner. We had to wash everything that we own - everything in our dressers, everything in the closets," Druschke said.

Druschke has already been through two pest control treatments as well. "When they came a second time, when they sprayed around the baseboards in our bedroom, they went running up the walls. So they're still in there."

As they spread from unit to unit, Druschke is worried that eventually bed bugs will find their way back to her home.

Metro Inspections, Permits and Licensing is in charge of regulating bed bugs once they're in apartments. For the most part, it's the property owner's responsibility to get rid of them, if there's an infestation in multiple units. If your landlord won't, you can report it to 311.

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