The town hall of Los Angeles – known from movies like “Chinatown” or “L. A. Confidential” – has a rat problem. To the continuing plague, let out the administration, carpeted floors, tearing, Traps and rooms smoke – so far to no avail.
Members of the city Council reports, the rodents would spread in the 91-year-old building to your heart’s content. They nested in potted plants, gnawed to the carpets, leaving behind feces on several floors.
Fleas in the carpets as a possible cause
The city Council Chairman Herb Wesson brought in last week, so a Resolution to “the extent of the vermin to determine and verify the pest control”. He recommended to remove all the carpets from the 27-storey Art Deco high-rise. In his office on the fourth floor, so many fleas and other vermin in the carpet, that he had it already pulled out.
The city lawyer Elizabeth Greenwood is convinced that she fell ill because of the rats, last November, of typhus fever. “It was terrible. I thought that I would die and didn’t know what was wrong with me,” she said to the local CBS station.
Not the first typhus outbreak in Los Angeles
City officials suspect the demolition of the opposite side of Parker center, the former headquarters of the Los Angeles police Department, as the cause of the rat infestation. However, it is not the first outbreak of typhus fever in the city: last year, the disease majority broke out in the homeless in the city. At that time, the health authority reported 64 cases in the year 2017, there were a total of 67, twice as many as in the previous years.
In the city of L. A. official’s life, according to more than 30,000 homeless people, many camping in tents under bridges or on highways and rail lines. They have little access to toilets and washing. Typhus fever is considered in the Western industrial Nations, as largely eradicated, is associated with poor Hygiene and poverty, and occurs mainly in developing countries.
The disease is transmitted by fleas that are found for example in the fur of rats and street cats. Symptoms include recurring fever, headache and chills all of a sudden. The disease is not transmissible from humans to humans.
