It’s a Rout : . . . and, for a Time, Ants Had Northridge’s Finest on the Run

Police in Northridge should have called out the “swat” team Friday.

Instead, Devonshire Division officers called on a heavily armed janitorial team when invading ants took over their Etiwanda Avenue station house.

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

Fled to Parking Lot

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

Police grabbed walkie-talkies and fled to the parking lot. From a hastily established command post in their garage, they summoned firefighters, paramedics and a hazardous-material rescue squad.

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

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

Ants Pronounced Dead

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

No police personnel were injured by the spraying. But thousands of ants were pronounced dead when officers entered the building about an hour later.

“I think the ants died of carbon monoxide poisoning from the firemen’s fans,” Johnson said.