Students return to infested Horizons West

TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
In the wake of a bedbug infestation, tenants of the Horizons West apartment complex adjoining the Northwest Missouri State University campus have been allowed to return to their homes. However, the five-building complex remains tagged substandard, and extermination efforts coupled with follow-up inspections will likely continue for the next several weeks.

Tenants of the Horizons West apartment complex, a privately operated residential property adjoining the Northwest Missouri State University campus at 1121 N. College Dr., returned to their homes Friday afternoon following a partial evacuation implemented due to a bedbug infestation.

Approximately 150 university students living at Horizons West, most of them from India and other Asian countries, were briefly relocated to Northwest’s Phillips Hall dormitory on Thursday after a warranted city search of 10 apartments revealed that eight were infested with the blood-sucking parasite.

About a dozen non-students living in the five-building, 108-unit complex were urged to leave as well, but the evacuation was not mandatory.

City Manager Greg McDanel said this was because bedbugs are considered a public nuisance rather than a direct threat to health and safety.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, bedbugs don’t pose a serious health hazard and are not known to spread disease. They can cause itching that, due to excessive scratching, sometimes leads to secondary skin infections.

Students evacuated from the building and checked into Phillips Hall were told to shower and change into freshly laundered clothing. But on Friday afternoon the decision was made to allow them to return to Horizons West, even though the apartments remained tagged by the city as substandard and the infestation was unabated.

McDanel said the evacuation was implemented because neither the city nor the university had a plan in place when the infestation was discovered, and officials were unsure about what steps should be taken to get rid of the bugs and how long the process would take.

He added that, in hindsight, moving the students to a bedbug-free building and laundering a couple of sets of clothing for them will probably speed the cleanup process, which is being carried out by the landlord, Bryan Belcher of Des Moines, Iowa.

No such respite was provided to non-student residents of Horizons West, who were denied temporary housing assistance by the Red Cross because bedbugs are considered a nuisance rather than a direct threat to health and safety.

However, McDanel said that local churches have called his office offering to assist Horizons West tenants with donations of laundry soap and other items needed to clear apartments of the stubborn pests, which scientists say have grown resistant to chemical extermination.

McDanel said the property owner has been cooperating with the city to abate the infestation and has hired an area extermination firm, Alert #1.

He said inspections of Horizons West units were to begin Saturday and continue on Sunday. After a short break the work will resume Wednesday and Thursday.

Inspections, treatment and follow-up evaluations will likely continue for at least several weeks, said McDanel, who described the intended outcome as “total eradication.”

The city manager said another reason tenants have been allowed back in to their apartments is that they need to be on hand to assist exterminators by providing access to clothing and other personal property. He added that Alert #1 has the authority to enter apartments with or without tenants’ permission.

Following chemical treatment, tenants will have to vacate their residences for about six hours, McDanel said.

After the initial treatment, McDanel said follow-up inspections will continue for as long as it takes to ensure the apartment complex is bedbug free. He emphasized that the abatement process would apply to the entire complex and not just those units where bedbugs are detected.

“The city is the driving the bus on this and requiring inspections on every unit,” McDanel said. “The property owner is cooperating with us, and the process is being carried out at the property owner’s expense.”

In the meantime, all five Horizons West building remain tagged with “substandard building” warnings taped to the doors. A second sign declares the structures “closed due to a pest nuisance.”

Though tenants have returned to their apartments, McDanel said the signs are in place to discourage visitors from entering the buildings.