Worry Over Rats Grows as S.F. Trash Strike Continues

As fears mounted of rats rising from sewers to dine on rotting trash, Mayor Willie Brown on Friday considered calling a state of emergency as more than 500 garbage haulers remained on strike for a second day.

As a city hotline received up to 200 calls per hour, officials warned residents not to drop garbage into hospital trash bins and other areas where overflows could pose health risks.

“It’s a nightmare,” said Dr. Sandra Hernandez, the city’s public health chief.

Officials asked residents to hang onto their trash at least until today or pay to dispose of it themselves at dumps around the Bay Area.

Meanwhile, supervisors for privately owned Norcal Waste Systems worked day and night to clear trash from medical centers, hotels and restaurants. But they were noticeably behind with pickups at schools, city officials said.

That worried Hernandez, who said that San Francisco, like many big cities, has a tenuous grip on its rodent problem.

“We barely have an equilibrium with the rats now,” Hernandez said. “We don’t want to see them get a stronghold.”

Rats and the fleas that infest them have been the source of typhoid fever, rat fever and even bubonic plague, she said.

As city workers noted trouble spots, Norcal officials--who operate Sunset Scavenger Co. and Golden Gate Disposal and Recycling Co.--continued to tell the city they could handle trash from the city’s largest garbage producers. About a third of the company’s 100 trucks were operating.

If the mayor calls a state of emergency, city workers, in what the mayor called a “lightning-rod operation,” may be ordered to haul trash in city pickup trucks over the weekend. Union leaders, however, said union workers would not cross picket lines to collect trash.

At the Stinking Rose, a busy Italian restaurant in the city’s North Beach neighborhood, owner Dante Serafini said his staff had triple-bagged and isolated the restaurant’s garbage, which normally is collected seven days a week.

“If it went on for a week . . . “ he said, then paused. “Well, it couldn’t. They’d have to call in the National Guard.”

Trash haulers, who have been without a contract since Dec. 31, have vowed to stay on strike indefinitely, though Brown on Friday said there had been “some narrowing of gaps.”

The main sticking point in the contract has been pension improvements, especially because Golden Gate and Sunset have different pension plans, Brown said.

Robert Morales, secretary-treasurer of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Sanitary Truck Drivers and Helpers Local 350, also said there were concerns over injuries to workers older than 50.