The first clue Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson had that rats were invading City Hall, possibly carrying a potentially deadly disease, was the pitter-patter of little feet. "We had an employee or two mention they heard something in the ceiling," Wesson told the AP Thursday as he led a tour through his office, where he recently had all the rugs ripped out. "Then we had an employee spot what she believed to be paw prints." After a flea hidden in a rug pounced on one of his employees late last year, Wesson had enough: He shut down the office and had all the rugs removed. Now, after learning that an employee in another City Hall office became infected with typhus around the same time, he has asked the city's staff to examine how much it would cost to remove all the rugs in the 91-year-old building and its City Hall East annex.
"When you go to work the only thing you should be concerned about is getting to work on time," Wesson says. He wants both rug removal and better forms of vermin control. "You shouldn't be worried about coming to work and catching some virus." Downtown is in the midst of a typhus outbreak, according to health officials, with several homeless people who live near City Hall among those afflicted. It flourishes in unsanitary conditions and is often spread by infected fleas hitching rides on rats. It is rarely fatal when treated quickly with antibiotics but epidemics killed thousands in the Middle Ages. Wesson acknowledged he hasn't actually seen a flea-bearing rat in his office but he's talked to enough people at City Hall to have no doubt there are plenty of them there. In any case, something was definitely chewing on his potted plants before he removed them on the advice of exterminators.
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