Wars of the roaches: PMPs share nightmarish accounts

PMP asked readers to share some of their best battles with cockroach accounts. If you’ve got a story you’d like to share, email pmpeditor@northcoastmedia.net and we’ll continue the conversation.
 

Overrun apartment requires aggressive effort

At a vacant apartment, German roaches could be seen from the outside through both the front and back doors. Like a horror movie, tens of thousands ran like a cloud of swarming bees to appliances, cabinets, walls and ceilings. Every inch was covered in cockroaches. Floors and walls were covered in brown sputum, like someone painted it brown to outline each appliance.

The estimated breathing time on a full face respirator was 10 minutes. This four-bedroom unit was unfit for human occupancy. I am certain the former tenants had respiratory and other health issues, including the occasional bout of food poisoning.

I took all precautions to prevent transporting them home, but it was impossible. My equipment was swarmed as soon as it hit the floor. My truck had cockroaches coming out of it for two to three weeks. And a month later, three showed up in my kitchen.

I eradicated the infestation at the apartment in two treatments and a 30-day bleed-out period. Appliances were scrapped. An employee who managed the property vacuumed nearly 50 gallons of dead cockroach bodies out of there.

My technique is aggressive in a case like this. It did require all electrical outlets to be removed. We had to drill 1/4-in. holes under kitchen cabinets to treat those voids.

This service required two residuals, an insect growth regulator, dust and a vacuum. I used a stainless steel air duster, vacuum, a compressed air sprayer, an electric sprayer, a portable aerosol system delivery unit, a rechargeable drill, a flathead screwdriver, flashlights and extra lighting.

A week after the first service, we had the unit cleaned, then retreated. We vacuumed daily, then weekly. Total elimination was achieved in 30 to 45 days. We cleaned again and put monitors under the sinks, and to my surprise there was not one cockroach, even five months later.
 

When you’re hungry, you eat…

Many years ago, I treated a restaurant that couldn’t open for business because roaches were running everywhere. It was a family-style restaurant that had already cooked all its food for the day. I sat down in the dining room, alone but with roaches running everywhere, and ate lunch. I was young, trying to survive in business and probably close to starving, so I had no problem eating.
— Dayton Hylton, President, Dayton’s Pest Control Services, Knoxville, Tenn.
 

‘Moving walls’ add to allergens

An abandoned Baltimore row house was being used as a crackhouse. It was infested with American, German, Oriental and brown-banded cockroaches, all at the same time. The walls were moving, as there were no hiding places left for harborage. It was one of the few places that when I left, I wanted an immediate shower, and to wash my hair and throw my clothes in the trash. The allergen load was so heavy I always came out of this place wheezing and sneezing.
— Dr. Kathy Heinsohn, BCE, Entomologist, American Pest, Fulton, Md.
 

Roaches resort to ‘all-fiber’ diet

In an apartment that was not treated for years, there were literally hundreds of roaches everywhere. There was not enough food, so they started eating the labels off bottles and cans, and even the ink on a stack of takeout food menus.
— Michael Morris, Owner, Knock-Em-Dead Pest Control, Ozone Park, N.Y.
 

Don’t let your fingers do the walking

An apartment tenant slammed a phone book down on the counter, leaving a large square of smashed German roaches there. When I arrived, live roaches were totally swarming over and feeding on the carcasses.
— Chris Stone, President, Pro Source Pest Services Inc., Isle of Palms, S.C.
 

Chillin’ in the fridge

In a multi-unit apartment building, each floor slowly began reporting activity except for the first floor, which didn’t want service. Eventually the first floor was inspected. It had an old refrigerator that had broken down a year previous, and was the jackpot of cockroach breeding sites. We ended up wrapping up the refrigerator with duct tape and treated it for several days before we moved it to avoid a mass scattering. Once the fridge was gone, it only took a month to clear the other apartments.
— Betty Welch, Technician, Maine Multipest, Acton, Maine