Bedbugs growing concern across north

Mishkeegogamang’s William Sabko plans to use a heating machine to control bedbugs after a bed bug presentation at the 11th Annual First Nations Northern Housing Conference.
“Now that I’ve been here and know about that heating machine, that’s the way we are going to go with it,” said the technical services manager for Mishkeegogamang. “It’s going to be very cost effective because it will be our machine and we can do it ourselves. We don’t have to get a company to come up and do it for us.”
Sabko said bedbugs have been discovered in three houses as well as the community’s safe house.
“The safe house — we just found out about it,” Sabko said. “We had them (pest control experts) come up and get rid of everything out of there.”
Health Canada’s Amy Montgomery said one First Nation community in the Sioux Lookout area has already bought a heating machine to kill bedbugs during her Feb. 14 bed bug presentation at the Feb. 12-14 housing conference.
“When they looked at bringing in a licensed person versus the cost of the (heating machine) equipment, it turned out that (with the cost of) a couple of visits from the pest control guy, they could purchase the equipment with it,” Montgomery said.
Montgomery said the heating machine is used to heat the house to a 50 degree Celcius temperature for eight continuous hours to kill bedbugs and bedbug eggs.
“You have to take everything out of the affected area of the home, usually it’s a whole house — they’ll pull everything out, anything that can melt,” Montgomery said. “They’ll plug it in and let it blow for eight to 10 hours to try to get to 50 degrees Celsius, which can be a struggle when you have the temperatures that we do and air can escape out of the windows.”
Montgomery said it is a difficult situation for people to clear their home for bedbug treatments.
“Cooperation is huge,” Montgomery said. “If a person living in a home doesn’t want to do all the things that are going to be necessary to get rid of the bugs, you will have challenges. It’s hard to get that all done. You might have to leave your home for a day or (a couple of days) for the treatments.”
Montgomery said treatments will not work unless the bedbugs are vacuumed up and hiding places are removed from the house.
“You have to pull things off the walls, plugin covers, whatever it takes to find and get rid of them,” Montgomery said. “In most cases we’re always recommending going with someone who is licensed because if they’re doing any chemical applications you want to make sure they are trained.”
Although cold temperatures can also be effective for killing bedbugs, Montgomery said the temperature has to be consistently below -30 degrees Celsius for a number of days to kill the bedbugs.
“It would have to be very consistently cold with no fluctuations in temperatures,” Montgomery said. “So it’s not something they use.”
Fort William’s Beverly Bannon said her parents recently had their home completely renovated to get rid of bedbugs.
“We had to clean out the whole house — they were doing renovations anyway,” Bannon said. “They were in a motel for about a month.”
Health Canada posted a pest note on bedbugs on their website at www.hc-sc.gc.ca/cps-spc/pubs/pest/_pnotes/bedbugs-punaises-lits/index-en....
The note said bedbugs are making a comeback and can now be found everywhere from homeless shelters to five-star hotels to public transportation.
The note also emphasized that early detection of a bedbug infestation is very important, as the larger the infestation, the more difficult it is to get rid of the bedbugs. Because bedbugs travel easily, nearby rooms may also need to be treated. The note suggests the removal or reduction of any clutter where bedbugs can hide.