A rat invasion upsets the staff of the historic Los Angeles City Hall

The first clue that Los Angeles city council president, Herb Wesson, had learned that rats were invading the city hall, possibly carrying a potentially life-threatening disease, was the beating of their feet.

"We had an employee or two who said they heard something in the ceiling," said Wesson on Thursday while he was leading a tour in his office, where he recently pulled out all the rugs. . "Then we had an employee identify what she thought was paw prints."

After a flea hid in a rug invaded one of its employees late last year, Wesson had enough: he closed the office and had all the carpets removed.

Now, after learning that an employee from another city hall office had been infected with typhus at about the same time, he asked the city's staff for the typhus. consider how much it would cost to remove all carpets from the 91-year-old building and its city. Annex Hall East.

"When you go to work, the only thing that should worry you, is to get to work on time," Wesson said. He wants both to remove the rugs and better fight against vermin. "You should not worry about coming to work and catching a virus."

According to health officials, the city center is in full bloom of typhus. Several homeless people living near City Hall are among those affected. It blooms in unhealthy conditions and is often spread by infected fleas that pull rats. It is rarely fatal when it is treated quickly with antibiotics, but epidemics have killed thousands of people in the Middle Ages.

Wesson acknowledged that he had not seen any rat carrying fleas in his office, but he had talked to enough people at City Hall to be certain that there was had a lot. In any case, there was surely something to chew on his potted plants before it removed them on the notice of the exterminators.

"We had a beautiful orchid right there," he says pointing to an empty container.

He thinks that many rats are relatively recent arrivals, displaced when the city began demolishing its former police headquarters, located next door.

On Thursday at City Hall, security officers and staff from several other council offices said they did not see rats either. But they do not doubt either that they are there.

"When we work late at the office, you sometimes hear something in the wall," said Mark Pampanin, Communications Assistant to Councilor David Ryu.

Wesson says that he does not know how much it would cost to replace all the carpets in the 27-storey building, some of which are decades old. But he does not plan to replace his.

He polished the original floor with concrete and says he and his team love the new retro LA look, perfect for an iconic building.

The white art-deco structure has played a leading role in clbadic films such as "Chinatown" and "LA Confidential". Superman "to the" Goliath "series of Billy Bob Thornton.

This story is one of the reasons why locals in Ryu's office said they removed their carpet after the city councilor took office in 2015, years before the rat problem began.

"This type of standard government rug was not really our style," said Pampanin. "This building, it's a living story from 100 years ago – and the floor is charming, and now it seems that our aesthetic has served us well in other respects as well."