HOW TO RID YOUR BUILDING OF BEDBUGS

The alarms first sounded last spring when a shareholder alerted the board that he had bedbugs in his apartment. Assured Environments, the building's exterminator, determined there were indeed bedbugs there, as well as in several adjacent apartments, in a relative's apartment down the hall, two stairwells and some of the basement storage lockers.

"We had so much to learn; it was very frustrating," says Kit Cowan, president of the board for the past two years. "Not only about exterminators, but about how to get into apartments, what rights the proprietary lease gave us, who's responsible for the costs."

Keeping it on the Ludlow

Who is responsible? In 2004's Ludlow Properties v. Young case, a Housing Court judge awarded a rental tenant a 45 percent rent abatement because of a severe bedbug infestation in his apartment. But responsibility in co-ops and condos is a murkier legal issue. "There's no case law involving co-ops and condos right now," says Timothy Wenk, a lawyer with Shafer Glazer, who has been handling a mushrooming number of legal cases involving bedbugs during the past five years. "But I would recommend that boards hire a pest-control specialist once they know about a bedbug condition. Liability could fall on them if bedbugs travel between apartments."

There's no time to investigate who brought bedbugs into the building. Forget that and go into action. "It's virtually impossible to pinpoint the source of an infestation," says Keough. "If you wait around for that to be settled, it can turn into a massive problem."

Dissatisfied with the progress Assured Environments was making, the board followed the recommendation of its property manager, Elliot Davis of Advanced Management Services, and hired Pest Away Exterminating, a smaller company that works in concert with other companies to coordinate major assaults on bedbug infestations.

"Every building's different," says Jeff Eisenberg, president of Pest Away. "Our biggest strength is strategic; we look at the building as a whole. The problem was in the basement. You've got to plug the dam, not just keep bailing water. We laid out a plan [concerning] how that would take place."

That multi-pronged blueprint was hammered out by Pest Away and the board, then spelled out at a building-wide meeting last September. It involved contracting with K-9 Bed Bug Detective (the dictionary spells the pest's name both as one word and as two) to bring in a bedbug-sniffing beagle named Russell; treating the insides of the infested apartments' walls with a powder called Delta Dust (deltamethrin); heating cracks and crevices to 285 degrees, then treating them with a chemical "cocktail"; and packing everything in the basement storage lockers in air-permeable containers. (Note: A misapplication of Delta Dust in 1998 nearly killed a Kentucky couple, according to a news item quoted on a non-toxic pest-control company's web site.)

Collaboration and Controversay

Two porters and a security guard were hired to make sure the packing was done properly and the basement quarantine not breached. The containers were then removed by a company called Moving Right Along, which placed them in fumigation vaults and transported them to its facility in Ozone Park, Queens. There, Bed Bugs and Beyond Fumigation Specialists treated them with sulfuryl fluoride, commonly known as Vikane. (Note: There is controversy about the use of this chemical.) Meanwhile, the empty basement storage rooms were treated with heat and repeatedly vacuumed.

Once all items and the building were declared bedbug-free, the items were moved back in. New rules for the storage bins, hammered out with the co-op's lawyer, were prominently posted. Every item in all 81 bins must be double-wrapped in air-tight plastic or placed in a plastic bin with an air-tight gasket. No exceptions. Russell, the beagle, now visits once a week. He'll check every apartment three times a year to make sure the scourge has not returned.

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