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City addressing bed bug reports in Denver Human Services building

Posted at 6:38 PM, Dec 08, 2017
and last updated 2017-12-08 20:57:48-05

DENVER — Bed bugs may have taken hold of a city building. A Denver7 viewer who works at that building claims the city isn’t doing enough to fix the problem.

The building that employee works at is the Denver Human Services building, located at 1200 Federal Boulevard.

“The last thing we want is for our clients to feel that they’re not safe in our building,” said Julie Smith, the spokesperson for Denver Human Services. “We are doing what we can to fix the problem – even if there’s lack of evidence we are treating it as a serious problem.”

The Denver Human Services employee who came to Denver7 wanted to remain anonymous for fear of losing their job but said there had been multiple instances of bed bugs in the building.

“We found out about a month ago that on our end of the building there were bugs falling from the ceiling,” the employee said. “One of my co-workers had one fall on their desk, and I saw the bug.”

The employee claims the city isn’t doing enough to address the problem.

“They’ve known for at least thirty days,” the employee said. “They told us last week that they were going to have someone clean and steam the carpets, I don’t know if that does anything. But that never happened, that was supposed to happen last weekend.”

The city said when it was notified of the problem around Thanksgiving, it immediately started to cleanse the building.

“We treated that area that same day we found out,” Smith said. “Then a few days later we got another concerned employee who said there may be bed bugs in another area. We treated it and called in a pest expert as well. We’ve been steam cleaning that entire floor because the safety and cleanliness of our entire building is paramount to us.”

Smith said the work for the bed bugs should be completed by Friday night. Smith also said after it is cleaned the city will look over those areas again for any more bed bugs.