Creepy crawlers shut down Tulsa’s busiest library Tuesday.
Officials say bed bugs are to blame for the closure of the downtown Central Library. A visitor bitten around lunch time while sitting in an upholstered chair alerted library staff.
Exterminators went through all the furniture and nearly every inch of the 135,000 square foot building, and found the bed bugs had infested a 1,000 square foot portion of the library.
Oklahoma’s only bedbug-sniffing dog, Ms. Liberty Belle, will travel to Tulsa from Norman on Wednesday to determine just how widespread the bedbugs are, said Tulsa City-County Library Chief Executive Officer Gary Shaffer.[Clip]
“This was an isolated case contained to a 1,000-square-foot area,” he said in a news release. “The total area of Central Library is 135,000 square feet.”
As a precaution, he said, all fabric guest chairs currently located on the second and third floors have been removed and replaced with vinyl and metal chairs.
Renovation of the central library is expected to begin in September 2013, and the project should be completed in May or June 2015.
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