Mosquito Zappers Try to Take Bite Out of Summer

If people didn’t neglect their pools, Rande Gallant might be out of a job.

“It’s a large part of what we do,” said Gallant, 37, a vector control specialist who zaps mosquitoes for a living.

One of nine full-time bug busters based in North Hollywood, Gallant explained that pools that go green and scummy are a major problem, especially in summer, when the sun quickly turns standing water into an incubator for mosquitoes.

In the San Fernando Valley, where there are more pools than palm trees, the area’s office of the Greater Los Angeles Vector Control District has had to hire another half-dozen seasonal workers to keep the dangerous insects at bay.

Right now, Gallant said, the district, which extends from San Pedro to Castaic, has information about 6,000 problematical pools in its computer database. Of these, 350 are being treated.

Mosquitoes are carriers, or vectors, for a long list of deadly diseases, including malaria, human and equine encephalitis, dengue fever and West Nile virus.

Gallant said that the district monitors for the presence of West Nile virus, but no cases have occurred in the Los Angeles area. That mosquito-borne diseases rarely occur in the United States is a tribute to vector control officers who daily battle the nasty creatures.

Going out during the day is a good strategy: “Most mosquitoes are night-biters,” Gallant said. Unfortunately, he has a pesky community of day-biters to contend with in the Hansen Dam Recreational Area in Lake View Terrace, a task for which he swaths himself in mosquito netting.

The office probably fought its most epic battles after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. “The pool was the last thing people fixed,” Gallant said, as he scooped a few dozen mosquito fish out of the holding tank behind the office.

Gallant was headed for a pool behind an empty house in Encino. Every few years, someone from vector control goes up in a helicopter and videotapes the entire district looking for pools that have gone bad. Sometimes, the health department notifies the office ([562] 944-9656) that neighbors are complaining about a surge in the mosquito population, which could mean an abandoned pool, buckets that have filled with rain water or something else that has turned into a mosquito nursery.

“There are other times when you have to be a detective,” Gallant said. He regularly drives the streets looking for such hot spots as pavements that have buckled because of spreading tree roots. Water tends to puddle in the gutter wherever the pavement is cracked, and mosquitoes move in.

As Gallant makes the circuit, he looks for clues to potential problems. A curbside pile of bricks may signal a torn-up backyard full of breeding holes. A dead front lawn may mean an abandoned pool not visible from the street.

Gallant and his colleagues have a legal right to enter any property that appears to be harboring mosquitoes or other pests. But he tries to be diplomatic and low-key when approaching a person with an insect problem.

“We try not to jump over a fence or do anything that will offend people,” he said.

Mosquito fish are the cheapest weapon in Gallant’s arsenal. Minnow-like, the little fish are impervious to most changes in the temperature and chemical makeup of whatever body of water they find themselves in. Gallant and his colleagues recycle them. Besides keeping a thousand or so on hand in the office’s holding tank, under a canopy of water hyacinth, they know that they can get more from ponds in Hansen Dam and elsewhere as needed.

Mosquito fish aren’t picky eaters, but mosquito larvae are their meal of choice. “I think of it as steak and lobster for them,” said Gallant, who loves to watch them feast in an infested pool.

A trained naturalist, Gallant is careful not to unleash the nonnative fish where they might find their way into a natural stream and threaten indigenous species.

There are five vector control districts in Greater Los Angeles, according to Stephanie Miladin, a spokeswoman for Gallant’s district, which is based in Sante Fe Springs and covers 1,300 square miles.

Different districts have different priorities, depending on which pests are raising the most havoc in the area.

“We don’t do rats and fire ants,” Miladin said, though Orange County does both. But the local district eradicates pests other than mosquitoes, including black flies, midges and Africanized honey bees. Its annual budget is about $4.5 million, she said.

Miladin speculated that the district is the most diligent in the Los Angeles area in tracking pools. And, she said, the problem is becoming more acute as the population increases--more people mean more pools mean more mosquitoes. “The problem just goes hand in hand,” she said.

Pools aren’t Gallant’s only problem, of course. Cemeteries that permit real flowers in water-filled containers can become large-scale mosquito factories. Most area cemeteries know to tip the containers over once a week, Gallant said.

When a job is too big for mosquito fish, Gallant uses other methods. A petroleum product called Golden Seal suffocates mosquito larvae. Or Gallant will toss a few Altosid briquettes into the fetid water. Altosid, he explained, prevents the larvae from maturing enough to breed.

“It’s a fountain of youth that keeps them from growing up, like it or not.”