CALLING OFF THE IDYLWOOD BEDBUG INVASION 
That great wave of bedbugs storming through the East End that Swamplot reported on last week? Probably didn’t happen, reports the neighborhood resident who first sounded the alarm. After a careful investigation that included the assistance of a local science teacher and microscope, Idylwood blogger Lauren H. now indicates that she believes the critters found in her living room were carpet beetles. “At least we don’t have blood sucking parasites. We just have little critters who love to eat fabric and wood and are equally hard to get rid of. I found the source of our problem today. It’s our maroon chair we inherited from Jason’s parents. They have been telling us to get rid of it for years.” [East End Escapades; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Lauren H.
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Tag: Hazards
“Remember a couple weeks back when I thought I was bit by a spider?” asks Idylwood blogger Lauren H. “Well, pretty sure that wasn’t the case.” She and her husband now think the critters who’ve seen fit to bite them in their east-side home 3 times each are actual bed bugs. “Or more specifically, couch bugs,” she notes in her online account. “Our living room is now covered in diatomaceous earth. It took care of our flea issue, and now we’re just hoping it continues to do [its] magic.”
Sure, we’ve all heard rumors about bedbugs in Houston. But until now, how much actual documentary evidence has been available? You know, the kind backed up by this kind of careful investigation and research:
GALVESTON BAY OIL SPILL: JUST A LITTLE TOPPING-OFF ACCIDENT According to the Coast Guard, the three-quarter-mile-long oil slick that made a few residents of San Leon feel a bit queasy, then washed up on the rocks at April Fool Point a week ago came from a spill caused by a Liberian-flag oil tanker — almost a week and a half earlier. The Omega Emmanuel reported a 50-gallon spill on February 8th as it was docked off Bolivar and taking on fuel from a barge. But the Coast Guard only tied the fuel oil to the tanker after environmental testing was completed this past Wednesday. “The cleanup ‘is complicated because the oil is embedded in the rocks,’ [Coast Guard petty officer Prentice] Danner said. ‘It takes slushing (agitation) to get it out, so I can’t speculate on how long it will take.'” Is that the same goo off the coast of Bacliff too? [Ultimate Clear Lake; previously on Swamplot]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: NAMING RIGHTS “. . . How ironic that the Astrodome is now called ‘Reliant Astrodome’ and suffers from an ‘electrical fire.’ Lame.” [David Beebe, commenting on The Short History of the Astrodome]
Update, 2/24: Oh, just 50 gallons, they’re saying now.
Coast Guard officials have yet to determine the cause of the “oily sheen” that appeared in Galveston Bay last week, but the cleanup has continued for several days and workers have still not identified the source. A three-quarter-mile-long sheen off the coast at Sixth St. in San Leon “was making some residents feel ill” when it appeared last Thursday, according to a report in the Galveston County Daily News. About 30 workers from Phoenix Pollution Control and Environmental Services were still cleaning up oily goo from a mile-long stretch of shoreline near April Fool Point at San Leon’s southern tip, a Coast Guard official told the Chronicle‘s Robert Stanton today. But the photo above, showing the slick on rocks at Bacliff — on the far northwestern side of the same peninsula — was sent to abc13 earlier today by a photographer who comments that workers didn’t want pictures taken. Another photo submitted by the same person appears to show boom deployed in the water off Grand Ave.:
THE SHORT HISTORY OF THE ASTRODOME 
The Astrodome’s electricity was cut off today after a small transformer fire broke out in a vault on the stadium’s east side. After extinguishing the blaze, firefighters used fans to escort a domeful of smoke out the exit ramp. [MyFox Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: MyFox Houston
Raw helicopter footage from abc13 of the fire currently raging at the Enterprise Products natural gas fractionation facility at 135 Sun Oil Rd., just east of Hwy. 146 in Mont Belvieu. By 3:55 in, the view gets better, and you can hear the commentator noting that the fire was visible from above Hobby Airport, just 30 miles away.
- Explosion, fire burning at Mont Belvieu facility [abc13]
- Plant burns in Mont Belvieu [Houston Chronicle]
Video: abc13
Today, two and a half years after city officials shut down the Gables of Inwood apartments and ordered all its tenants to move out, demolition crews began tearing down the squatter-friendly 163-unit, 10-building, 4 1/2-acre Inwood Forest complex — a process expected to take 6 weeks. City officials say they hope to recoup the $400,000 cost of the demo from the owner, Collins Ofoegbu of El Sobrante, California. But that may not be so easy. As of August 2009, Ofoegbu ranked as Houston’s top scofflaw, having racked up more than 700 building-code violations for issues with the property at 5600 Holly View Dr. His attorney told the Chronicle at the time that the warrants couldn’t be resolved until Ofoegbu settled a dispute with his insurance company, which he said had refused to pay for damages resulting from a fire at the complex.
- It’s Demolition Day for Northwest Houston Apartment Complex [39 Online]
- Previously on Swamplot: City Shuts Down Gables of Inwood; Park Memorial Condos Next?, Daily Demolition Report: Out with the Gables of Inwood
Photo: 39 Online
Sometime before the Christmas holiday last year, “high winds” caused a part of one of the wind turbines mounted to the top of downtown Houston’s Hess Tower to “detach” from its mounting point. “Two pieces of the debris fell to the street. Nobody was injured,” Hess Corporation spokesperson Mari Pat Sexton tells Swamplot today. Sexton had no comment on circulating rumors that one or more of the the pieces struck a car on the street.
The incident helps explain why the whirling turbines, installed as a featured element at the top of the new 29-story tower last summer, have been silent since mid-December. In the photo above, taken by a HAIF commenter shortly before Christmas, the turbines appear to be missing. “After the event occurred, (the turbines) were locked down,” Sexton says, adding she is unaware of the turbines’ current status or whether there are plans to replace them. “The building is still under construction.”
The Gold LEED certified skyscraper, named Discovery Tower until Hess signed on to lease the whole thing 2 years ago, sits at the northern edge of Discovery Green, a short walk from Minute Maid Park. It was developed by Trammell Crow, designed by Gensler, is the thirtieth-tallest building in Houston, and was the first in town to feature — and draw some power from — wind turbines. Here’s how they looked (and sounded) last year, before the incident:
One advantage of those double-height entries and oversized arched door-topping windows that come free with the purchase of your new home in Fairfield, as reporter Jennifer Bauer demonstrates: As you’re coming down the stairs, it’s easy to scan your front yard for mummies. KPRC photographer Jon Hill is lighting up the internets with the harrowing tale of his encounter last Wednesday night with a man who had an actual Ace bandage wrapped around his head. After spotting the sorta-masked sorta intruder lurking in his yard in the Fairfield neighborhood of Inwood Park, Hill ran out the front door with hopes of launching a surprise tackle. The wrapped visitor made an un-mummy-like exit, but Hill wasn’t able to chase him down. Thanks to a teevee report documenting the episode and other sightings of the unidentified interloper, all of Fairfield is now officially on mummy alert. Money quote: “Harris County sheriff’s deputies recommended that homeowners who see the man dressed as a mummy in their yard call 911 immediately.”
Having perhaps worked its way through the 100,000 gallons of raw sewage dumped into Buffalo Bayou shortly before New Year’s, the Houston Ship Channel received an additional contribution late yesterday: 15,000 gallons of beef tallow, which leaked into the waterway from a storm drain. There is, of course, much more where that came from: a rupture in an onshore tallow tank owned by a California company called Jacob Sterns and Sons caused 250,000 gallons of animal fat to spill on the waterway’s northern banks. A three-quarter-mile stretch of the channel — from City Dock 16 to the Buffalo Bayou Railroad Bridge — has been closed.
Some video of the scene, where six boats have deployed boom, from abc13:
HEADWATERS OF THE HOUSTON SHIT CHANNEL A sewer collecting system on the northern banks of Buffalo Bayou near Lockwood donated more than 100,000 gallons of untreated waste to the waterway last night. City officials expect the problem to be fixed sometime today. [MyFox Houston]
WILL THEY EVER GET TO PLAY THE HOUSTON FLOOD? 
In a rare and surprising victory for regional realism, prospective fans have chosen to name Sugar Land’s new minor-league baseball team the Skeeters, the Atlantic League team’s management announced yesterday. Defeated at the baseball ballot box: also-rans the King Canes and Lizard Kings. Fans should be able to watch the Skeeters and swat mosquitoes from $8 seats in Sugar Land’s new strip-mall-inspired open-air stadium on the banks of Oyster Creek by the 2012 season. While one rendition of the new team’s logo pictures a mosquito piercing a baseball with its proboscis, an animated version (featured at the top left of every page on the team’s new website) depicts it angrily and repeatedly stabbing into Fort Bend County on a map of Texas. (See also less-charitable responses to the name from Around the Loop and Deadspin.) [Skeeters News; previously on Swamplot]
BIOSAFETY LEVEL 4, GALVESTON 
How’s tricks inside the air-tight $174 million Galveston National Laboratory on the UTMB campus, where space-suited investigators get to hang out with anthrax, avian influenza, bubonic plague, Ebola, typhus, West Nile, SARS, drug-resistant tuberculosis, Rift Valley fever and other bad boys? “There’s negative pressure and high air flow. It’s all built to keep stuff inside of the envelope. Animals are housed in containment devices and any individual that comes in must be decontaminated,†director of “high containment facilities” Thomas G. Ksiazek explains to reporter Amanda Casanova: “Construction on the 186,267-square-foot building started in 2005 and scientists moved in earlier this year. In the last few months, there has been only one report of possible exposure to a level 4 agent. In August, an employee stuck herself with a needle of a Central European Tick[-borne] virus while dosing mice, according to a medical branch incident report. The incident was reported to the Centers for Disease Control, and the employee was treated and monitored for three weeks but did not get sick.” [Galveston County Daily News] Photo: Nick Saum [license]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: AN UPDATE FOR POTENTIAL CONDO INVESTORS AT PINE VILLAGE NORTH 
“the HOA has financial and legal problems. it’s operating month-2-month; no reserves. even though our assessments are supposed to cover exterior repairs of our units, you may never get your units repaired, unless you do it yourself. many of the units have serious plumbing problems. if the HOA is dissolved, PV may become a free-for-all; it’s almost that now. if you’re willing to risk all of that, then go ahead and buy, otherwise, don’t.” [Marina Sugg, commenting on Pine Village North Open House Welcome] Photo of Pine Village North: HAR
