SALT LAKE CITY — A Salt Lake courtroom turned a little buggy Thursday.
The mere mention of bedbugs was enough for Justice Court Judge Sydney Magid to clear her courtroom during a busy morning arraignment calendar. A security officer apparently was told or overheard a woman who accompanied a defendant to court say she had bedbugs. He alerted the judge who, as a precaution, asked everyone to leave about 10:30 a.m., said Mary Johnston, justice court director.
Some people reported seeing bedbugs jumping onto others.
It created a situation, she said, where administrators weren't sure what to do. Hotel rooms, not courtrooms, after all, are the usual venue for bedbugs. They decided to put any lingering parasites (bedbugs, not lawyers) on lockdown by declaring the courtroom closed for the rest of the day.
"As far as I know, no one saw a bedbug," Johnston said. "It was one of those things, let's just err on the side of caution. … Some of our employees were concerned because they didn't know what kind of impact it would have, if they would leap off of people."
The Salt Lake Valley Health Department received an anonymous call from the court sometime afterward, said Diane Keay, environmental health area supervisor.
"I would love to ask questions of them," she said. "I'd like to know who said (they had bedbugs) and who said they heard it."
The caller was advised to tell people to wash their clothes in hot water and place them in a hot dryer.
"It doesn't put anyone out there at risk. They don't stay on the body. They go hide until they get hungry again. It's not like lice," Keay said.
Bedbugs are about the color and size of apple seeds, she said. They feed on human blood. They don't carry or transmit diseases, and they don't bite or jump.
"All they do is pierce and suck," Keay said.
In a courtroom, they would scurry for seams in the wooden benches or carpet to conceal themselves until sensing a carbon dioxide trail leading them to a person to feed on. "If they stayed in the courtroom and one was hungry, it would creep over to find a spot where it could suck blood out of somebody and go hide again," Keay said.
Johnston said the court contacted the city's maintenance staff, which sent a pest control company to fumigate the courtroom. It opened for business again Friday morning.
Environmental health officials have seen a recent resurgence of bedbugs. The Environmental Protection Agency even held a national bedbug summit in 2009. Keay said when she started at the health department in the '80s, bedbug calls came in a couple of times a year. Now, the phone rings almost daily.
"It's bad here. It's bad everywhere," she said.
Apparently, bad enough that their reputation precedes them.
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