Firefighters Had To Burn This House Down; It Was So Badly Infested With Roaches

Dec 17, 2018

Successful people usually don’t give up, but it’s also wise to know when to call it quits. Firefighters are known for putting their own lives at risk in order to protect neighborhoods from fires. However, in this case, they were required to go against their normal instincts by setting a house on fire and allowing it to burn.

In 2010, residents of the small town of Pana, Illinois started complaining about a horrible problem in their neighborhood. An abandoned home on a residential street was so heavily infested with roaches that the creatures were spreading to other homes in the area.

The city council tried using conventional pest control measures such as bug bombs and pesticides, but the German cockroaches in the house were resistant to these chemicals. One problem with this species of roaches is how quickly they breed. Killing a large portion of them is not a solution because their numbers multiply quickly to previous high levels.

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The city council had to come up with some drastic measures to eradicate this menace, so they called the local fire department. Instead of fighting a fire, this time the department was instructed to set a house ablaze and burn it to the ground.

Setting fires is not unheard of for firefighters because many of them are familiar with using controlled fires to prevent the spread of forest fires and using controlled burns for firefighting exercises. However, in this case, they were doing something unusual because they were setting a fire on a residential street.

Demolishing the home in other ways wouldn’t work either because German cockroaches are known to infest the foundation of homes that are knocked down. Therefore, the only practical solution was to burn down the house.

In order to isolate the home, the firefighters dug a trench around it that created a ring of fire around the property. The trench was stuffed with straw, and the flames were accelerated by gasoline. Adjacent homes were doused with water to prevent the spread of the fire.

After the home burned down to the foundation, firefighters put out the fire and inspected what remained. They found no living cockroaches, and complaints of roaches from neighbors stopped. The extermination was deemed a success.

It’s usually tragic when a house burns down, but in this case, most people were happy to see this roach-ridden nightmare burn to the ground.

Can you imagine living in a house filled with roaches? What were your thoughts while watching this video? Let us know in the comments. If you found this story intriguing, send it to your friends.