Bedbugs reports rising in the Southland
55 reports in a month have been confirmed
LOS ANGELES, Calif.—Bedbugs, which have bedeviled the East Coast, have shown up in upscale Beverly Hills and homes and apartments in more than two dozen Southland communities, it was reported today.
"It's really all over the county," Angelo J. Bellomo, director of environmental health for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, told the Los Angeles Times.
Health officials began tracking reports of bedbugs last spring after seeing an increase in reports from tenants, property owners and businesses.
As many as 55 reports a month of the rice-sized brown pests have been confirmed.
Across the United States, bedbugs have been found in upscale hotels, businesses, churches, medical facilities and college dormitories.
The pests are "very good hitchhikers" that can migrate on luggage, clothing, beds, furniture and other items, L.A. County Public Health Director Jonathan E. Fielding told The Times.
The critters also reside in draperies, pillows and even electronics, and adult bugs can live more than a year without feeding.
But health officials said more concern about bedbugs might have something to do with the increase in reports in Southern California, where the infestation appears to be far less severe than in New York, Ohio and other places.
Bedbugs don't transmit diseases, but "it's very difficult to go to sleep at night when you know you become a slab of meat to feed on," "Richard Cooper, an entomologist and vice president of the website BedBugCentral.com, told The Times. "People have anxiety and start isolating themselves.
There's a huge emotional impact that can't be underestimated."
Isotech Pest Management, based in Covina, wouldn't say which store it recently treated in Beverly Hills, but co-owner Mike Masterson told The Times that over the holidays "we're going to see such an influx of bedbugs in stores that it's going to catch a lot of people off guard."
Masterson, a former celebrity bodyguard turned star of the Discovery Channel reality show "Verminators," told the newspaper that Isotech did 39 bedbug treatments in 2004 and will probably "break 40,000" in 2010, including dorms and faculty housing at major universities, and a 600-unit hotel in San Francisco.
Treatments can cost hundreds of dollars.
For tips on how to prevent or limit bedbug infestations, see "Keeping bedbugs at bay."
You don’t need to light a fire under Connie Sparks. She provides her own, well, you know... The 43-year-old entrepreneur is the founder of the Wade Institute, a business consulting firm with clients as far away as Hawaii, New York, Ohio, and, of course, in her home state of California.
“I help small businesses define their businesses,” said Sparks. “I help them restructure their business and strategic plans. I also help them with business development and business financing. I’m pretty much hands-on with my clients.”
Veterans Day traces its roots back to World War I, originally known as the Great War, because the carnage and scope (it involved all of the world’s major powers and a total number of combatants topping 70 million troops) of it surpassed any previous armed struggle experienced in the history of civilization. The official end of hostilities was marked by the Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919 at the palace of the same name on the outskirts of Paris.
SOUTH LOS ANGELES - Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, and the pastor of the First AME Church today joined the chorus of outrage over a Florida minister's threat to burn the Quran on the anniversary of 9/11.
Ariel Castro maintained his home as a prison for three young women, holding them in seclusion and sexually assaulting them for his own pleasure, a Cuyahoga County, Ohio, prosecutor told a judge Thursday.
Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Brian Murphy told the judge “the charges against Mr. Castro are based on premeditated, deliberate and depraved decisions to snatch three young ladies from Cleveland’s Westside streets to be used in whatever self-gratifying, self-serving way he saw fit.”
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Ropes and chains have been found inside the Cleveland home where police say three women spent close to a decade in captivity, city officials said Wednesday.
While Public Safety Director Martin Flask said investigators haven’t confirmed how the ropes and chains were used, police Chief Michael McGrath told NBC’s “Today” that they were used to restrain the missing women.
“We have confirmation that they were bound,” he told NBC.
