Terry Slater woke up one morning in his Victoria Towers bachelor suite and felt pain.
When he turned on the light he saw a bedbug about the size of a pencil eraser digging into the flesh of his forearm, sucking blood with a bite that left a dime-sized welt that still has not healed months later.
Slater’s problems with bedbugs started in February, four months after he moved into the 12-storey Prince George building. A year ago, the 50-year-old Prince George man lost his right leg below the knee and suffered internal injuries when he was T-boned by another vehicle on his motorcycle. Now confined to a wheelchair, he was forced to leave his job as an oilfield lease operator for Petro-Canada.
The accident crushed his kidneys and caused renal failure and Slater requires dialysis five days per week, with each treatment lasting 5 ½ hours. Unable to walk, Slater hired a friend to come in to help clean his apartment, and that’s when they discovered his bachelor suite had bedbugs.
“We sprayed in the corner and there was a vent cap there and then all of a sudden they were everywhere, they were on the bed, all over the place,” said Slater.
He said he contacted building management and was told Victoria Towers hadn't had bedbugs for years, adding he felt like he was being blamed for their presence.
“So they sprayed my place and the worst part about it is I’m on dialysis, so the hospital quarantined me for all five sprays. So for five months I couldn’t go in and do my dialysis with anybody. I had to be put in a separate room and stripped and checked for bugs. It was pretty embarrassing.”
Interior Pest Control applied those five monthly pesticide treatments to Slater’s apartment and in May his bedbug problem appeared to be eradicated.
Unfortunately, it didn’t last.
In early July, Slater’s fifth-floor neighbour knocked on his door, shocked at discovering hundreds of dead bedbugs in the clothes dryer in the laundry room next door to his apartment.
Last Tuesday (July 9), Slater said that same neighbour was in the hallway early in the morning and found the walls, floor and elevator door crawling with bedbugs. It turned out the apartment directly across the hall from Slater’s was infested. The occupant admitted he woke up to find hundreds of bedbugs crawling over him on his bed.
“He said they’re everywhere and that’s why I know they’re coming across to my doorstep, they’ve got to do something,” said Slater. “There’s a whole bunch of floors right now going through it. Something has to happen because people can’t live like this.”
Slater’s frail elderly next-door neighbour knocked on his door one day to ask him to open a soft drink bottle and as she handed him the bottle a bedbug crawled across her face.
“To see something like that was heartbreaking,” he said. “That could be my grandmother.”
Notices have been posted in the building that suites were to be sprayed again for bedbugs on Wednesday (July 17) from 1-5 p.m. and the tenants in the affected suites and their pets were required to leave their premises. Management offered them McDonald’s gift certificates as compensation.
Slater used silicone to seal the baseboards of his unit and said he goes through a $30 can of bed bug killer about every week to spray a towel he rolls up and puts on the floor at the front of his doorway to keep the bugs out. He finds dead bedbugs on the towel every day.
He bought a brand-new bed and couch when he moved in and both became infested with bedbugs. He said he was told by a housing official that he was the cause of the problem and was told to dispose of the bed and couch, but refused because no compensation was offered.
He was told by the exterminator who treated his place that it was safe to go back to the apartment five hours after it was sprayed, but his medical condition leaves him vulnerable to infections and he worries he will suffer adverse effects if more pesticide is sprayed in his building.
“A hotel was not even offered to me," he said. "I lived with those bugs for five months."
He said several residents are reluctant to complain about the infestation over fears management will try to evict them. Slater is worried that will happen to him now that he’s gone public by speaking to The Citizen about his bedbug problem.
Doreen Blumers, 62, a sixth-floor resident who has lived there for 3 ½ years, says Victoria Towers has had bedbugs for “years and years,” and that Slater was not the source of the problem. Her unit was treated for bedbugs prior to him moving there and she knows of several floors in the building with infested units. Blumers says the bug problem is exacerated because the building has not been kept very clean since the former manager retired two years ago.
Melodie Woytowich was plagued by bedbugs in her eighth-floor suite at Victoria Towers for five months last year. The 68-year-old has lung disease which requires constant use of bottled oxygen, which restricts her mobility, confining her to her home.
She lived through the creepiness of bedbugs crawling on her body as she slept in her bed before they migrated to her loveseat, which caused her to suffer more bites. That went on from April to October.
“I’ve been here for nine years and I’d never dealt with anything like that before,” said Woytowich. “They were crawling behind my bed and on my bed and I got bit all over my legs. The only time I didn’t have to worry about them was when I was in the hospital.”
She was told in an email from B.C. Housing to pack up her clothes to prepare for pesticide treatment. Workers took 19 garbage bags full of clothes to a laundry service for cleaning at a cost of $1,291 and had them returned two weeks later.
“My family wouldn’t come over here to visit or anything,” she said. “I had a chair my sisters had bought me and it had been sprayed but I was still getting bit on my legs from the material under my legs. My legs were covered with bites and I had them on my neck and my head. I had to pay almost $200 to get rid of my love seat and my lift chair and my housekeeper got bit."
Woytowich thought the problem was solved but found more bugs in her unit two months ago. She keeps a can of Raid in her sitting room area.
She also blames the bedbug problem on the overall lack of cleanliness in the building.
“The elevators are filthy, the hallways haven’t been getting cleaned, this place has sure gone downhill,” she said. “We used to have cleaners on contract who did the windows and carpets and floors downstairs. This place was nice downstairs.
“I’d like to see the managers trained in what apartment managing is about. The manager that was here before was eyes-on. He was part of the people, he lived here and he was approachable.”
In an email sent to the Citizen, B.C. Housing said the provincial government takes tenant concerns seriously and is committed to resolving the problem with a “thorough and rigorous” bed bug eradication program conducted by a pest control technician. It provides tenants detailed instructions on how to prepare and declutter units that are being sprayed and what occupants should do before and after treatments to make them as effective as possible.
“Bedbugs are a problem in most major urban centres. This is a much larger issue and not one confined to rental properties,” said B.C. Housing.
“We have treated 13 units in this building, as well as common areas. It is not uncommon to have to do repeat treatments. The building manager is working with the contractor to resolve all spraying in the units that are outstanding due to lack of access or preparation, and treatment of common areas continue. These areas were sprayed as recently as (July 11), and signage was in place during spraying.”
One Victoria Towers resident afraid of repercussions from the building management went to MLA Shirley Bond’s office with his complaints of bullying tactics and now has 10 tenants who have signed a form which allows Bond to represent their concerns. In its response, B.C. Housing said:
“The health, safety and well-being of residents is of critical concern to B.C. Housing, and we take any report of staff harassment very seriously. The tenants at Victoria Towers have access to the call centre where any communication creates a report that can be reviewed and actioned as necessary. Additionally, there is a feedback process available though B.C. Housing where comments and feedback can be provided so that the complaint resolution team can review and respond.”
