Rats Force Firefighters From NYC Station

Yahoo! News ^ | Wed Aug 6, 5:43 PM ET | LARRY McSHANE, Associated Press Writer

[yonif]

NEW YORK - A blazing building? Not a problem for New York City firefighters. A firehouse infested with vermin? Well, that's a rat of a different color.

Horrified members of New York's bravest have temporarily abandoned a firehouse because of massive rat infestation, and fire officials say the building must be gutted to eliminate the pervasive rodent population.

"It was like that movie `Willard,'" Steve Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, said Wednesday, referring to the film about a social outcast who goes on a rampage and uses his rats to attack colleagues who had been tormenting him.

"I had goosebumps for a long, long time after that movie."

The firefighters at the 43-year-old house in Queens felt the same way after hearing rats scurrying through walls and spotting their beady eyes peering out from beneath the kitchen sink. Some of the rats were 10 inches long.

One night, firefighters captured seven rats in their kitchen and found several more dead ones behind a radiator, said Stephen Humensky, Queens trustee for the firefighters union.

Dead rats in the walls and ceilings caused the stench that finally led to Tuesday's evacuation.

"When you take out your pots and pans to cook and they're loaded with rat droppings, it makes for a very unappetizing situation," Humensky said, holding up a dead rat outside the firehouse Tuesday.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said exterminators visited the firehouse 26 times since March, to no avail.

"In retrospect, maybe we should have just, day one, ripped everything out," he said.

The building's 60 firefighters will be temporarily reassigned to three nearby firehouses. The Fire Department said it will take up to 10 weeks to strip the house down to its shell and rebuild it.

[yonif]

Ping.

[HiTech RedNeck]

CATS!

[HiTech RedNeck]

"When you take out your pots and pans to cook and they're loaded with rat droppings, it makes for a very unappetizing situation," Humensky said, holding up a dead rat outside the firehouse Tuesday.

(1) Store the pans upside down

(2) Rats are a good source of extra protein

[lentulusgracchus]

Infestation on this level usually requires gutting the building down to the lumber, after gassing the rats. They might wait until the weather cools, to make this a little less hideous a chore.

After the remodeling, they might try introducing nonpoisonous snakes of substantial size, like Eastern racers and corn snakes or medium-sized boa constrictors (not the big Asian ones). Also, ferrets work -- and terriers are good ratters of a size and speed not to be overly impressed by a big Norway rat. Cats won't handle a recrudescence of this problem -- they need terriers and big snakes. Plus, the odor of the snakes will drive the rats nuts and prompt them to move out. Now what's needed is a really big population of seagoing anacondas that can be introduced into New York's sewers, subways, and harbor to clean up the rest of the problem. Cold weather will keep the snakes in the warmer underground areas where the rats like to hide.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Now what's needed is a really big population of seagoing anacondas that can be introduced into New York's sewers, subways, and harbor to clean up the rest of the problem.

I'd love to see the resulting news story, with people reporting snakes coming out of their toilets.

[HiTech RedNeck]

What about sending the snakes into the walls after the rat carcasses?

[tom h]

"they might try introducing nonpoisonous snakes of substantial size ... Now what's needed is a really big population of seagoing anacondas that can be introduced into New York's sewers, subways, and harbor to clean up the rest of the problem. "

You certainly elicited an "EEEEWWWWWWW" from me and other Freepers who read your post. I just can't get out of my mind the law of unintended consequences should the city put thousands of snakes in the sewer system, or dozens of snakes in a municipal building.

[lentulusgracchus]

I'd love to see the resulting news story, with people reporting snakes coming out of their toilets.

Nye problemo. All they have to do is redirect them down the nearest storm drain, manhole, electrical conduit or air-conditioning drain.

<snake, singing> "Searching, searching for my ba-bee, / Searching, searching for my luuuuuvvv....."

<rats squealing in terror>

</singing>

<silence>

[lentulusgracchus]

What about sending the snakes into the walls after the rat carcasses?

I don't think they're saprophytes. I think they need fresh. Better just to rip the walls out and start fresh, the building's contaminated with rat droppings anyway.

[lentulusgracchus]

.....dozens of snakes in a municipal building.

Nah, it's nature -- needed to reestablish a balance, and make the rats as paranoid and neurotic as the two-legged New Yorkers already are, partly because of the rat problem. I mean, fair's fair.

When psychiatrists are taking stress-management appointments with three-foot-long Norway rats, the anacondas will have done their job.

</black humor>

[tom h]

I don't know enough to disagree with your science but as an engineer I know that if you give the snakes enough food on which to thrive, then they will become tomorrow's overpopulation problem.

[Jeff Gordon]

Oh, those kind of Rats. I thought this was going to be an article about the NYC Mayor.

[lentulusgracchus]

.....I know that if you give the snakes enough food on which to thrive, then they will become tomorrow's overpopulation problem.

Nah, they'll just outmigrate toward other sources of tasty rats, and start burning through the East Coast's rat population. Particularly since, needing warmth in winter, they'll stay underground. Now in summer, they might come to the surface and threaten the occasional poodle, but how do you suppose the total universe of small pets measures up against the murid biomass load? Those snakes are going to be great ratters.

The only drawback I can see is that the snakes might tend to compete with, and put pressure on, the owl population in leafier areas of New York City.

[Bon mots]

I don't know enough to disagree with your science but as an engineer I know that if you give the snakes enough food on which to thrive, then they will become tomorrow's overpopulation problem.

Oh, that's simple. Then you send ferrets and mongoose in after the snakes! ;-)

[sgtbono2002]

You dont get that many rats overnight. How many times have reports been made to headquarters of the rat problem and nothing was done?? How many Firefighters brought in rat poison on their own to try to solve the problem? What condition is the rest of the neighborhood? If they drive the rats from the firehouse where do they run .You cant keep one building in a neighborhood free from rats you have to clean the whole neighborhood.