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Health Alliance confirms bed bugs at Concord hotel
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Published: September 24, 2009
Jason Vander Waal and Monica Elrod, of Greenville, S.C., expected, a soft pillow, a warm blanket, clean sheets, and white towels when they checked into a hotel in Concord on Sunday.
Instead, they got bedbugs.
"At approximately 5:30 a.m., my family and I woke up to being bit by bedbugs. Not only in one bed, but both beds were totally infested with them. There were more than 100 of them squished on our beds," Vander Waal said.
They collected some of the bugs and went down to the front desk to confront the clerk.
"He was sorry, but said there is no problem, and he could not refund the money (the room was booked through Travelocity), but then offered a lowball $20 to resolve the issue," Vander Waal said.
The Cabarrus Health Alliance confirmed the complaint, said David Troutman, the alliance's environmental health director. Troutman sent two environmental health specialists, David Smith and Chrystal Swinger, to investigate the claim. Swinger is the bug expert in the department.
"That room, 137, did have bedbugs. That's the first case we've had a compliant about, went out to investigate, and it was confirmed," Smith said.
"I went in and looked around the mattress and I could see the adult bedbugs and the other larvae stages," Swinger said. "They were hiding in the dark. This is the first one I've gone out to that I've seen an actual bedbug," Swinger said.
Swinger brought a sample of the bugs back to CHA to place under a microscope, and that's when they officially confirmed it was bedbugs.
Ragini Patel, manager at the Howard Johnson Inn on Concord Parkway, confirmed in a phone call that the two did complain about bedbugs in their room, but the hotel tried to offer a solution.
"We asked what we could do to satisfy them. They could move to another room. They could check to see that the other room did not have the bedbugs," Patel said. "My husband said, 'If you find the bedbugs in any other room I will give you $500.'"
Bedbugs — once believed to have been eradicated from the United States — are making a comeback in hotels. Even some upscale hotels are having a bedbug problem.
In a New York Times article published over the summer, they sited international travel as partly to blame. Bedbugs become hitchhikers in the crevices of suitcases.
In a survey done in 2004 by Pest Control Technology Magazine, hotels and motels were the most common location for bedbug infestations, totaling 37 percent of all calls.
The National Pest Management Association says overall bedbug reports increased 71percent from 2000 to 2005.
There is even a Web site, a sort of national registry, to track bedbugs at various hotels and apartments at www.Bedbugregistry.com.
Adult bedbugs can be up to a quarter of an inch long, are dark brown and have a flattened body. The bugs hide in tight places on the mattress, box springs, bed frame and elsewhere in the room.
During feeding, their abdomens fill with blood and become dull red and more rounded. Young bedbugs look like the adult bugs, but are smaller and lighter in color.
Each female bed bug can lay between 200 and 500 eggs during her lifespan.
Bedbugs are nocturnal and crawl out from daytime hiding spots to feed while you sleep. Each bug may bite more than once, and a pattern of clustered bites or in a line is not unusual to see. Bites are not currently shown to transmit diseases, according to the Cabarrus Health Alliance.
The bite doesn't usually hurt, but can itch, and the scratching can lead to a secondary infection.
This is the only complaint filed with the CHA, so far.
"They didn't offer up that anyone had complained before," Troutman said.
The manager at the hotel said again that no one had complained before, and that pest control had been in to treat the week before.
"Every month we do pest control. Last week they asked if we had any bedbugs, and I told them we were lucky," Patel said.
Patel called the hotel's pest control company in to solve the problem immediately.
"The pest control guy is here today and is doing the pest control. We checked all the rooms, and that was the only one," Patel said.
The hotel will be inspected again after the problem has been resolved.
• Contact reporter: Robin L. Gardner:704-789-9140
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