Many of the 137 people who live at the John Sevier apartment building in Johnson City haven't been sleeping all that tight for at least the last year-and-a-half. For months, the government housing apartment complex, home to seniors and people with disabilities, has been infested by bed bugs.
"Vampires are real," Bryan Saunders said of the bed bugs that have crawled into his room. "They've evolved over the years into tiny, tick-size little bugs."
Those little bed bugs have wreaked havoc on the historic John Sevier Building, sucking the blood of some of its tenants like Lavon Brooks.
"They're more itchy," Brooks said. "They get on your body and itch."
Brooks knows the pests aren't much of a health risk, but they are a nuisance. In fact, he rarely gets a good night's rest because of them.
"You can't sleep," Brooks said. "You sleep at night and you wake up and they're crawling and I just crush them up with my hands. They crawl all over the bed."
Come November, these horror stories should be a thing of the past. M & M Properties, the company that manages the apartment building, recently hired Terminix to address this problem, nearly two years too late in Brenda Springer's eyes.
"The reason (bed bugs have) taken over the building is because (management has) denied their existence," Springer said.
M & M General Manager Harry Gibson says that is not ture. Instead, he says staff responded to bed bug complaints starting 18 months ago.
"We addressed it when we initially knew of the problem," Gibson said. "Here we thought we had it under control and about a month or so ago it reoccurred."
Now M & M Properties is turning to the experts. Today, Terminix held a training session for tenants and volunteers to prepare for the upcoming extermination. In the coming weeks, Terminix will go into every room, freeze all of the bugs and their eggs, and then treat each apartment with insecticide dust. Exterminators will start from the top of the building and make their way down, temporarily displacing people.
Having failed her before, at least one tenant remains skeptical.
"It's a band aid on a deep puncture," Springer said.
Despite her concerns Gibson is confident Terminix will eliminate the problem. Still, he admits tenants and John Sevier staff will have to come up with a plan to keep the bed bugs out.
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