Bedbugs make appearances at city courthouses
Creepy- crawlies spotted in public seating area have made people uncomfortable to sit down
The provincial government will begin inspections of some of Vancouver’s public buildings after bedbugs were detected at two Vancouver courthouses.
Bedbugs have been found in the public seating area of three of the busiest courtrooms at the Vancouver Provincial Courthouse on Main Street, according to lawyer Chris Johnson, who sits on a provincial court committee that has been urging the B. C. government to upgrade its cleaning practices at the courthouse.
They were also found at the Downtown Community Courthouse on Gore Street in December, but officials say that infestation has been eradicated.
Both courthouses are located in the Downtown Eastside, where bedbugs are rampant — most notably in some of the poor neighbourhood’s single-occupancy hotels.
Johnson learned of the problem at provincial court Thursday, and he noticed that people were so uncomfortable with the idea of bedbugs on the chairs that they were not sitting down in court.
Personally I wouldn’t want to be in one of those courtrooms. People don’t want to sit down because they are on the chairs and in the carpet.
CHRIS JOHNSON
LAWYER
“It is thoroughly disgusting,” said Johnson. “I think the main concern that people have is ‘ Can this get in my briefcase?’ and ‘ Can I take it home?’ There are hundreds of people who work in the courthouse.”
He did not know whether any of Friday’s scheduled court cases would be disrupted as pest control workers try to rid the building of the bugs.
“Personally I wouldn’t want to be in one of those courtrooms. People don’t want to sit down because they are on the chairs and in the carpet.”
Bedbugs were found in the bail, plea and arraignment courtrooms, Johnson said. They were also found in the lawyers’ lounge, he said, adding all the furniture was removed from that room because of the infestation.
Johnson said B. C. Supreme Court gets a higher grade of cleaning and inspection and he would like to see the same level of service at provincial court.
But Kevin Jardine, assistant deputy minister for court services at the Ministry of Justice, said standards are the same for both courts, though he said cleaning staff will now be directed to be more vigilant. For example, they may be asked to clean under chairs.
He estimated the cost of bedbug removal at the community court was around $ 3,000, while he anticipated the bill for provincial court could reach $ 12,000.
Jardine said an assessment will determine whether the carpets need to be replaced. The assessment, as well as treatment with hot steam and a topical spray, could take a couple of weeks to complete.
In the meantime, he said no court proceedings have been disrupted and staff will hold information sessions at the court for employees and court users to inform them about ways to prevent the spread of bedbugs to their homes.
He said the government will come up with a long- term strategy to monitor and inspect for bedbugs in other public buildings on an ongoing basis.
“Although bedbugs pose no health risk to people, it is unpleasant,” he said. “Now that we are aware of this, we’ll be doing some formal or informal assessments in other ( courts.)”
According to the Bed Bug Registry, an online source that tracks the pests in major cities, Vancouver on Friday had 1,944 reports of bed bugs, with the majority of cases located in the West End and downtown.
The Vancouver Coastal Health Authority is not investigating the incident at the courthouse, saying there is no link between bedbugs and the transmission of human disease.
“Bedbugs are a pest like cockroaches and lice. They don’t carry disease,” Coastal Health spokeswoman Anna Marie D’Angelo said in a Friday email.
The creepy- crawlies have been showing up at public libraries in recent years around Metro Vancouver, forcing the libraries to dispose of books and close branches in an attempt to stop the bedbugs from spreading.
In September 2011, a reader at Metrotown library found a dead bedbug in a book. The bugs also showed up at the Cameron branch in Burnaby. Burnaby Public Library had a pest control company brought in and used a sniffer dog to inspect all of its branches.
A month later, New Westminster Public Library closed to deal with bedbugs.
Adult bedbugs, which consume blood, can live for more than a year without feeding and can crawl more than 30 metres for a meal.