"There needs to be experts involved with this," said Brian DiCicco,
director of Pest Management, Inc. "This is the one insect that you just
can't do by yourself. I mean, you could find home remedies for roaches
and ants and you might be able to get it under control. Bed bugs are a
unique species and they are very difficult to get rid of." DiCicco's
company is a division of Hill
Country Pest Control, Inc. , a Kerrville, Texas, based company that
has been killing bugs since 1971. It took 35 years for the company to
begin finding severe infestations of bed bugs. "Our call volume
since 2006 is up 1000 percent," Dicicco said. "Bed bugs are a terrible
situation; there's no question about it. They affect your mental state;
they affect every part of your existence because they're affecting where
you sleep." No one knows that better than Lindsey Kimmons, a
resident of the Riverlodge Apartment complex in the northwest part
of the Austin area. She shows a visitor to her bedroom and starts her
tale of woe. "This is where I first started getting bit, every
single night in my bed," she said. "It's awful; they bite you and if
feels like an awful mosquito bite that does not stop itching. And they
last for days, so I would accumulate bites over a week and have them all
over me. Miserable, all over my face, my neck, my whole body. They were
crawling on top of my sheets, under my sheets, on my mattress; I was
changing my sheets every day. I could see them and when the exterminator
came, finally, I could see the eggs. So they were laying eggs in my
bed." Kimmons complained to managers at her complex, but she says
they were slow to respond. "I ended up getting a hotel for two
weeks because I couldn't take it anymore," she said. "They said it's not
a health risk; it's not a health hazard, so live with it, pretty much.
They said I was having an allergic reaction that most people don't
have." Adam Temple, a spokesperson for the Charlotte, SC, company
that owns Riverlodge, would not comment on the record, but the company
did say in a written statement: "We were made aware of this isolated
incident and took decisive action within 24 hours to address the
concerns. We are currently following the recommendations of independent
pest control experts in the Austin area in order to completely resolve
the issue." Kimmons, though, said she knows of several other
infested apartments in the complex and argues all the units should be
treated since bed bugs migrate from apartment to apartment via wiring
and pipes. The debate is not unusual. "Disputes between tenants
and landlords is a big problem," said DiCicco. "Who's at fault? You
really can't say. Other states have taken steps to make it clear: It is
what it is; you've got to take care of it and move on down the road.
Under their legislation, the landlord is responsible to take action
within a certain amount of days or they are fined every day they do not
take care of it. The longer that infestation sits there and no one is
dealing with it, the more chances that it's going to spread out into
other neighboring units," Dicicco said. Back at the co-op,
DiCicco shows off the work of a specially trained dog that can sniff out
a bed bug problem and confirm an infestation in its early stages. "In
the beginning, four months of a bed
bug infestation , it's almost impossible with a visual inspection
to confirm because the numbers aren't up yet," he said. If the
numbers grow out of control, the company brings on the heat. "Right
now, we're at 125 degrees," said Pest Management's Sarah McElwee as two
massive heaters with loud fans almost drown out her voice. "Our goal is
to get it up to 130 to135 degrees." Room by room, the heaters
eliminate the critters as Alan Robinson, general administrator of College House
Co-ops , which runs the bug-infested Pearl Street Co-op looks on
happily. "We've learned, number one, it can happen to anyone,
that it's not about cleanliness," he said. "It doesn't say anything
about the person and it happens a lot if there are a lot of people
coming in and out." Robinson acknowledges, though, that the co-op
failed to appreciate the seriousness of the problem in the beginning.
If it had, it might have avoided the $110,000 expense the bed bug fight
is expected to cost. "Looking back, I wish I could have done a
lot more earlier," he said. "I thought of it as just another pest
control issue; you call your regular pest control company; they put down
some chemicals and it's gone. That's not true and I wish I knew then
what I know now. Assume it's going to happen to you. Assume you're going to get it, monitor and then immediately respond once you
identify a problem." Meanwhile, area hotels, nursing homes and
even hospitals are on the alert. Pest Management has treated 10 hotels
in the Austin area alone over the past two years and one still uses the
company's dogs for regular inspections. So why, you may ask, is
all this happening now? It's true that bed bugs have always been with
us, but treatments with the now-banned DDT significantly reduced their
numbers. With that weapon now gone, the bugs are on a comeback. "Due
to international travel," said DiCicco, "they've really hit the eastern
seaboard and they've slowly been moving inland from New York and San
Francisco into the middle of the country and the Austin area. Now
there's a certain amount of resistance to certain products. There's not a
lot of chemicals out there that take care of this particular problem."
Hence the heat. Bring it on. | 
