The Cameron branch of the Burnaby Public Library is reopening today after bedbugs were detected there on Monday.
The library is having all of its branches inspected after dead bedbugs were found at its main branch in Metrotown at the end of September.
Cameron was the first branch to be inspected, and bedbugs were detected there Monday morning.
"There were hits in a number of areas throughout the branch," Edel Toner-Rogala, chief librarian of the Burnaby Public Library, said in a phone interview Wednesday morning.
"We made the decision to deal with the problem quickly and efficiently."
The branch reopened on Wednesday at 10 a.m., according to Toner-Rogala.
Books in the affected areas were bagged and boxed, and sent to the Metrotown branch to be heat-treated, she said, and books that had been verified as clean were sent over from Metrotown.
A pest control company was brought in to steam clean the furniture and the bookshelves, she said.
But patrons may notice some of the shelves are empty at Cameron today, Toner-Rogala added.
The other branches in the city - McGill and Tommy Douglas - will also be checked, though Toner-Rogala did not give a timeline for that, saying the detection companies are busy because of the escalating bed bug problem in the region.
"The challenge is booking them," she said. "The companies are very much in demand."
This is the first time the Burnaby libraries have had a bedbug problem, according to Toner-Rogala, and protocols are being put in place to stay on top of it.
"We do know we have to do these kinds of checks more frequently now," she said.
The first bedbug was found at the Metrotown branch during the week of Sept. 19, when a reader told staff there was a dead bug in a book. The book was put in a plastic bag, and the insect was identified as a bedbug.
A pest control company was brought in and used a sniffer dog, finding more dead bedbugs were in the thriller-mystery section.
The library decided not to issue a public alert at that time, to avoid creating a panic, according to Deb Thomas, the manager of the Metrotown branch, who added the bugs are annoying but not dangerous.
This time, the library put up an alert banner about the Cameron branch on its website, www.bpl.bc.ca, which stated the branch was closed due to bedbugs. But that banner had been taken off the website by Wednesday, when the branch reopened.
The banner linked to an advisory on the website, which contained links with information on bedbugs and how to treat them, according to Toner-Rogala.
