‘Invasion’ Repelled at Northridge Station House : Bug Bombs Rout Police as Well as Ants

Police in Northridge should have called out a “swat” team this morning. Instead, Devonshire Division officers called out a heavily armed janitorial team when an invasion of ants took over their Etiwanda Avenue station house.

The janitors fired volleys of insect spray and lobbed bug bombs into the police station. But instead of routing the ants, they chased out 45 detectives, patrolmen and records clerks on duty in the building about 8:30 a.m.

“There was a lot of nausea, a lot of dizziness and lightheadedness. We had to get out,” one officer said.

Police grabbed walkie-talkies and fled to the parking lot. From a hastily established command post in their police car garage, they called for safety officials and firemen. Firefighters rushed to the scene with paramedics and a hazardous materials rescue squad.

“It turned out to be an insecticide that is supposed to be compatible with humans but not good for ants,” Los Angeles City Fire Battalion Chief Ted O’Miela said. “It had a sickening smell.”

The rescue squad conferred with doctors at Northridge Hospital Medical Center and concluded that the bug spray was harmless. Firemen then set up five large gasoline-powered fans to blow the spray out of the police station.

Police routed emergency calls through city operators and locked five prisoners from the station’s holding cell in a police bus while the station house was being aired out.

“The problem is this station has a closed air-conditioning system that recirculates air,” Police Sgt. David Johnson said. “It was built in the early ‘70s when security was uppermost in everybody’s mind.”

No police personnel were injured by the spraying, but thousands of ants were pronounced dead at the scene when officers entered the building an hour later.