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Bedbug war to empty downtown apartments

Biltmore to move 180 residents for fumigation

Sanitation workers throw items from Biltmore Towers apartments into a garbage bin along First Street in downtown Dayton on Tuesday, July 21. The owners are launching an all-out war on the bedbugs that have infested the historic building. Staff photo by Jim Witmer

Jim Witmer Sanitation workers throw items from Biltmore Towers apartments into a garbage bin along First Street in downtown Dayton on Tuesday, July 21. The owners are launching an all-out war on the bedbugs that have infested the historic building. Staff photo by Jim Witmer

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By Steve Bennish, Staff Writer Updated 11:57 PM Friday, July 24, 2009

The downtown Biltmore Towers apartments will be emptied and fumigated for a week to fight a bedbug infestation.

The all-out battle on the tenacious bloodsucking insects represents a new front in a two-year war inside the privately owned brick building at 210 N. Main St.

On Aug. 22, workers from Terminix will tape and seal all the windows, then flush the 18-story structure with Vikane — an odorless, colorless and nonflammable gas.

Aimco of Denver, which owns the building, will temporarily move all 180 residents and their pets in with friends or relatives — or put them up at The Dayton Airport Inn and Suites on Poe Avenue if no other accommodation is available.

A Chinese restaurant on the ground floor, the building’s only business, will close during the fumigation.

Because the infestation has resisted floor-by-floor fumigation for two years, Aimco said, the building-wide attack with the deadly gas is now the only option.

Aimco spokeswoman Cindy Duffy said residents should be ready to return Aug. 30. She had no cost estimates for the project, but said the money for the fumigation and relocation would come from Aimco’s operational budget.

The Biltmore, which receives Department of Housing and Urban Development Section 8 subsidies, isn’t the only apartment building in the area with bedbug problems.

Tom Hut, a supervisor with Public Health — Dayton & Montgomery County, said he’s receiving a dozen queries a day, mostly from apartment dwellers, about bedbug infestations. That’s a jump from a dozen queries per week in 2008, he said.

The problem is real, he noted: “It’s not being made up by the pest control industry by any means.”

Jim Cunningham, field office director for the Cincinnati office of HUD, said the Biltmore is the first apartment complex he’s heard of that will get a complete top-to-bottom fumigation.

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Bedbug problems are, unfortunately, on the rise and should be taken seriously. I found great information and products on domyownpestcontrol.com.

Mary
11:56 AM, 8/13/2009

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Bed bugs have been terrible in our building. I ended up in the hospital for a week after using a bed bug bomb to get rid of them. I also have over 50 scars from their bites and am still itching.

Karen
11:04 AM, 8/6/2009

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A Harvard journal said that bedbugs can not stand the heat that builds up in a closed vehicle that is left setting in the sun. One way to decontaminate suitcases and clothing.

Norm
5:17 PM, 7/28/2009

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When these people are displaced to other locations what is keeping them from taking the bedbugs with them and contaminating the other locations?

Norm
5:13 PM, 7/28/2009

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I'm the editor of the <a href="http://www.bed-bugs-handbook.com/be...">Bed Bugs Handbook</a>. I hear reports like this from all over the country. We need new pest control methods to fight this growing problem.

Jeff Grill
8:12 PM, 7/27/2009

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