this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023

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British couple died on holiday after adjoining room fumigated for bed bugs (edition.cnn.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 108 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is the most horrific thing I have seen in a long time and this the second time I have had to read about something like this. I work for a company that caused this to happen to another family in a different place using different fumigants but it brings me back to that time and I am weeping now.

I wept to my wife when I heard of my company's malfeasance in their failure to ensure that nobody was harmed in that other place. I have since witnessed a top to bottom realignment of priorities in my workplace to focus on safety...too little, too late - they did crime then that to meet profit margins and they still hold that most dear despite lip service to "safety first".

I'm so very sad that this happened again to another family and I hope that the perpetrators (most likely managers pushing production goals) pay a heavy price for their crime. (spoiler alert, at my company the bad guys were not properly punished and I am still salty about that).

[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Holy shit that's some greed to not cancel their reservation while fumigating the next door room

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago

The married couple returned to their room for the night but were found seriously ill the next day by their daughter. John Cooper, 69, was declared dead in the room, while his wife Susan, 63, died hours later in hospital.

Horrific.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Seriously.

Even if they weren't harmed, if two rooms share a connecting door, you should definitely treat both at the same time.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago (3 children)

5 years to get an independent coronor's report, and still no word of any compensation.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

Don't travel to Egypt.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

5 years to get an independent coronor’s report

I know coronors don't work quickly, but taking five years, that just seems too weird to me.

IMO there's something else going on that's not obvious from the article.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Jesus, I thought heat treating had become the norm for dealing with bed bugs?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Nah, the maintenance guys in my old apartment building a few years ago doused my unit and me with aerosolized chemicals. Fun times. I'm assuming it's much cheaper than heat treating.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Heat treating is tricky since it involves getting the entire area heated up to around 55 degrees I believe. That includes anywhere they're hiding, so it needs to be a consistent 55 degrees throughout. Usually there's like these big tent structures and such involved.

It's more effective than poison though, at a 100% lethality if you do it right.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My uncle owns apartments and he has eradicated them any time they’ve been an issue. He seals the place up with plastic over the windows and duct tape, drags in several large kerosene heaters, blasts the place and monitors the temperature. Bam, problem solved literally every time.

He has had issues with people who keep bringing them in by allowing the same visitors sometimes. Particularly this one family who lived in two of his apartments. Once they left it hasn’t been an issue.

Anyone who has followed his advice after the second treatment, “Someone who is coming here is bringing them in on you. Don’t have anyone over for awhile and you’ll see.” has had the problem eliminated. He uses bifenthrin as a preventative measure in other apartments when someone reports them. That always seems to keep them isolated.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Gosh that feels so familiar.

I used to live in an apartment complex with bedbug issues.

This complex, to be precise. As you can see there's a lot of apartments.

We'd get Anticimex over to spread diatomaceous earth. Diatomaceous earth works by sticking to the bugs and drying them out. Usually things will die within a few hours. While effective, it takes time to get all of the insects. You'll need to wait for whatever eggs around to hatch and grow up and die as well, so expect to leave the powder around for a month or so. It also involves placing it all strategically since all the bugs need to walk through it.

Since we were the ones to report the issue, they'd only do our apartment. The bedbugs never came from us to begin with, so while the diatomaceous earth would work and reduce the problem to basically nothing, after a while the bedbugs would find their way back! We complained to the landlord several times, said that they need to properly investigate the complex and find whichever apartments need sanitising, and get that over with. They never did so presumably that complex is still absolutely infested.

Over the course of a few months we carefully sanitised all of our possessions (I was inspecting books page by page), washed what we could in high temperatures, and stored stuff away in a rented locker, double-sealing everything in bin liners and duct tape. We tossed a lot of stuff too.

Managed to avoid bringing the fuckers with us. It's been years now and I'm still shaking out my clothes before I go anywhere to ensure there's nothing with me.

The proteins that make up the bugs bodies denature (kind of unfurl) at around 45-49 degrees. Hence you want to bring the area up to 55-60 degrees and keep it there for a while to ensure that all the bugs die.

It makes sense your uncle deals with it that way, had we been given that as an option I would've taken that too. It's 100% effective and works super fast compared to poison or diatomaceous earth. And well, if you have pets (like me) or young children then poison while cathartic, isn't the most optimal solution.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Published 11:47 AM EST, Fri November 10, 2023

From the article...

in August 2018

Can anyone tell me why CNN is reporting on this today, when it happened in 2018?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Apparently the independent coroner's report that the family ordered just came in

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah I saw that reason later on in this conversation as I was scrolling down and reading the comments.

Seems really really weird though that it took that long, it's almost like there's a story in there somewhere.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why can't we put companies in prison for shit like this?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

No prisoners are big enough for those people.