Bedbug Complaints Up In Mecklenburg County

Keisha Robinson said she had been staying in a room at the Charlotte Garden Inn, near Interstate 85 and Sugar Creek Road, for more than a month when she noticed welts growing on her arm.

"I could actually feel them at nighttime, like, actually biting on me," she said.

"What did you think when you found there were bedbugs where you were staying?" Eyewitness News reporter Jim Bradley asked.

"That was real nasty," Robinson said.

And, unfortunately, they are more common in Mecklenburg County. Eyewitness News searched bedbug complaints made to the Mecklenburg County Health Department and found they've jumped from 18 in fiscal year 2009 to 30 last year and 38 already this year.

"Certainly, it's much more on folks' radar screen, and the incidents are clearly increasing out there, whether it's residential housing or in hotels," said Dennis Salmen with the Health Department.

But only hotels and public facilities are regulated by county inspectors.

Channel 9 found that two hotels account for more than 20 percent of all complaints received by Mecklenburg County this year.

At the Economy Inn on Tom Hunter Road, customers have complained of bedbugs four separate times in the past eight months.

The Charlotte Garden Inn also has four complaints, including a report filed in March in which an inspector found evidence of bedbugs in multiple rooms.

"(The inspector is) referencing at least four different rooms," Salmen said. "If she didn't find the bedbugs themselves, she found evidence of it, whether it's sheddings, blood spots -- some of that."

Channel 9 went looking for an explanation, but a hotel employee said no owner or manager was available. The employee later passed along a message from hotel management about the bedbugs, saying they were very sorry it happened and that the problem had been resolved. The worker said new mattresses and bedbug covers were purchased and that the hotel was professionally exterminated and given the all-clear from the county.

The county confirmed the Charlotte Garden Inn is now in compliance.

But Salmen warned that bedbugs across the county remain hard to keep away.

"This emerging public health pest is not just, ‘they're gone one day and you don't have to worry about them again,'" Salmen said. "It's a constant, ongoing process of surveillance and inspection."

The county said it's continuing to send inspectors into the hotel on a weekly basis.

Plastic mattress covers have proven to be good at fighting bedbug problems, Salmen said, whether they're in hotels, apartments or houses.

More Information: Bedbug Prevention Tips