CENTRAL OHIO -- Bed bugs -- a person's bad dream.
NBC 4 has reported on bed bugs in Franklin County hotels. Now, the creepy crawly insects are infesting local apartments.
NBC 4 has the bottom line on why it's happening, where it's happening and how to fight back.
A childhood warning has come back to haunt Ohio State student Jordan Williams.
"I remembered going to bed and hearing, 'Sleep tight. Don't let the bed bugs bite.' I never knew they were real until I came here," Williams said.
Williams lived in a local apartment that was infested with bed bugs. She still has bite scars on her arms.
An exterminator assessed the situation best.
"He went into my room and said, 'Those are bed bugs.' I said, 'What are bed bugs?' He said, 'They're your worst nightmare,' " Williams said.
Williams started living out of her car.
Paul Wenning is with the Franklin County Bed Bug Task Force. Wenning said apartments are causing serious concerns.
"With apartments, you have a transient population, and the areas we're seeing the most infestations are where we're having low-income housing," Wenning said.
The zip codes that are seeing the most infestation according to the taskforce are: 43228, 43213, 43232 and 43219.
Wenning said people also are picking up couches in alleys and bringing in the bed bugs.
"We killed like 40, and they're really hard to kill because they're like flat. We had to squish them hard ... and they don't die easily," Williams said.
Exterminators may not even be able to eliminate them. There's a growing resistance to the chemicals, almost an immunity.
If you think bed bugs are on something on your person, such as clothing, throw them into a clothes dryer and run the dryer on high heat for 15 minutes.
That method obviously won't take care of bed bugs on larger possessions, items that can't be heated or apartments.
Williams has moved home to Kettering, Ohio.
"I decided to transfer back home after this quarter, and I don't have enough money to put down a deposit on another apartment," she said.
For additional information, stay with NBC 4 and refresh nbc4i.com -- Where Accuracy Matters.
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