“One of our members was sleeping in the bunk room, and he woke up and it was on his arm,” he said.
Heating equipment was borrowed by the department to kill the bugs, Bellefontaine Service Safety Director Jim Holycross said. Heating treatments started Dec. 3, he said, and a chemical treatment was used at the end of last week.
“We have to have a multi-step approach to this,” Fissel said.
Firefighters have been following special procedures to prevent them from taking any bed bugs home, Fissel said. When they come to the station, they keep their clothes in a sealed container.
Bellefontaine firefighters would not comment on the situation, but Marcia Crissman, a firefighter’s wife, said she’s frustrated with the time it took to get an exterminator to the station.
“My concern was that my husband would bring them home to my house, and I don’t want to have to deal with that stuff here,” she said.
Heating treatments are the best way to eradicate bed bugs quickly, Holycross said, but Crissman felt professionals should have been called sooner.
“I’m very pleased with the fact that they’re finally doing something,” she said. “It’s been over a week since they first found them.”
Firefighters have suffered while the treatments have gone on, she said.
“They have had to sleep in recliners,” she said. “In fact, one night my husband went out and slept on the bench in the squad just so he could lay down flat.”
There aren’t any signs of bugs spreading to any firefighters or patients’ homes, Fissel said, and the department will continue to monitor for them in the station.
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