Ants Invade the Station House--It’s No Picnic for the Cops

Police in Northridge should have called out the “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 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.

“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 firefighters. Firefighters rushed to the scene with 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 City Fire Department Battalion Chief Ted O’Miela. “It had a sickening smell.”

The rescue squad conferred with doctors at the Northridge Hospital Medical Center and concluded that the bug spray was harmless. Then firefighters set up five large gasoline-powered fans to blow the bug 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,” 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 at the scene when officers entered the building about an hour later.