Weather Preparedness

Ed Finkel 

From wildfires and earthquakes in California, to hurricanes and heat in the Southeast, to tornadoes across the nation’s midsection, the array of increasingly intense weather-related conditions and incidents have catalyzed pest management operations to find ways to adapt. 

Statistics compiled by the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration help paint the picture of what pest companies face. During the past 20 years, according to the NCEI, there have been 168 severe storm events that each caused at least $1 billion in damage, totaling $430.5 billion.  

During that same time, 40 tropical cyclones, each causing more than $1 billion in damage, have resulted in a total cost of $1.25 trillion, 29 floods have caused another $107.9 billion in damages, and 16 wildfires have destroyed $123.2 billion in property.  

Not only that, but these events have become more frequent. There were 33 billion-dollar disasters in the 1980s (totaling $219.8 billion); 57 in the 1990s ($335.3 billion); 67 in the 2000s ($621.6 billion); 131 in the 2010s ($994.7 billion); and 115 in the first half of the 2020s ($746.7 billion). 

In the Face of Hurricanes 

Based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, The Bug Man pest control company is “in the hurricane belt” and has protocols in place to react if a named storm threatens the region. It most often happens in late summer and early fall, says President Layne Salvant. 

The “punch list of things we do operationally” includes a service set up to ring all employees’ cellphones if there’s an office shutdown so that “we can at least work from home for a few days to take calls,” she says. The company also transfers techs from one office to another if power is only partially restored. 

While techs typically take their vehicles home at night, they can leave them at the office if a storm is predicted, since the office is on higher ground and has covered parking, Salvant says. “Before a storm hits, everyone has to gas up their trucks because the fuel lines will be really, really long after a storm [since] everyone will be running generators,” she adds. 

Hurricanes typically put The Bug Man out for a few days mainly due to downed power lines, Salvant says. Since Baton Rouge is a bit inward from the coast, “We don’t, knock wood, get hit as hard as New Orleans would,” she says. The phone tree system works well as long as there’s cellphone service, she adds. The company also works with its marketing team to send automated out-of-office messages to clients with service scheduled. 

To ensure worker safety in the face of downed power lines, the company follows local weather and traffic reports to learn when it’s safe for technicians to get back out on the roads and into neighborhoods, Salvant says. And while clients probably don’t expect their technicians to show up immediately after a storm, they appreciate receiving automated messages inviting them to reschedule. “They’re going to be dealing with other things,” she says. But it’s still ideal to “have a customer relationship management system that can do that for you, with a click of a button.” 

Against Wildfires  

Lloyd Pest Control in southern California has to deal with the increasingly year-round fire season that affects the six-county region it serves, along with the occasional earthquake. It also closely tracks regulatory changes from the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA). “We have constant ongoing programs and protocols we follow,” says Efrain Velasco, technical director. “Fires and heat stress are the two biggest regular things.” 

Roughly 60% of the company’s service schedule is residential, which Lloyd Pest Control handles quarterly, while commercial accounts are closer to monthly. Keeping potential wildfires and heat in mind, the company has been moving away from power-spraying “gallonage” of materials and toward baiting and dusting, targeting cracks and crevices, Velasco says. “We’re trying to use integrated pest management in all of our accounts, regardless of whether the client is asking for it,” he says. “Fires and heat don’t affect it as much.” 

Cal/OSHA also published new mandates in January related to heat stress, such as supplying ice for technicians when the weather gets above 85 degrees and providing cooling towels and straw hats. Technicians are encouraged to spend time in their air-conditioned trucks as needed, and some branch managers choose to provide hydration packets to mix into water. 

Another change is in the types of pests the company is treating. Lloyd Pest Control has needed to institute different protocols and procedures as technicians come across insects they’ve never seen before in their service area, which Velasco suspects is due to the changing climate. “I’ve got to have the right materials and right procedures for our technicians, so they can control it,” he says. 

Battling the Unexpected 

Tornadoes and now, hurricanes, are top of mind for Rid-A-Bug Exterminating Co. Inc. in Hamptonville, North Carolina, says Vice President Marty Roberts. “It seems like it’s getting worse,” he says. “We had Hurricane Helene come through. Nobody thought North Carolina was going to get hit like we did. We had a lot of lost lives, businesses, and houses.” 

Rid-A-Bug can replace its tools and equipment but not its people, so the company’s leaders stay “glued to the weather” when a storm is approaching. “We make sure that, No. 1, they leave in plenty of time to get home before it hits really hard,” he says. “We have a call-them-all program where we send texts out to employees within a minute to tell them to head home or head to a safe space.” 

The company moves its pesticides and other chemicals to higher ground or away from the central path of a storm to ensure they don’t end up contaminating groundwater or soil, trains technicians to deal with any spills or leaks that do occur, and locks up equipment so “things are not going to be blown around, and somebody’s going to get hurt,” Roberts says. 

The company communicates via social media and email that it’s closed for a storm and will be delaying services. It also texts or calls clients, Roberts says. “We have an after-hours emergency number that’s on our answering machine,” he says.  

Also important is ensuring any files remain secure in the event of power outages or other weather-related disasters. “We make sure that everything is backed up, the digital files scanned into the computer and put up on the cloud,” he says. 

Battling It All  

Located in Melbourne, Florida, Slug-A-Bug Inc. battles heat, severe thunderstorms, hailstorms, tornadoes, and, of course, hurricanes, says John Gagnon, wildlife/exclusion manager. The technicians in his department deal with dangers even on a beautiful day, given that they’re on roofs and in attics, and they have protocols in place to avoid mishaps. 

“We make sure they have ice to grab in the morning,” Gagnon says. “We do ‘buddy checks’ if the heat indexes are up there to make sure they’re hydrated. We give them vests with ice packs. We slow down a little bit on scheduling so we’re not stressing them out with the heat. We give them heat mats, which are aftermarket products they can lay on when a metal roof is in direct sunlight.” 

Slug-A-Bug also performs regular vehicle inspections and uses a product that helps rain to “bead” on a windshield during a heavy storm. But Gagnon notes, “There’s no reason to be out there if you’ve got lightning strikes within a certain perimeter. We take it easy and take a break. And hurricanes, of course—we shut down.” 

The company implements a 30-30-30-10 schedule each month, planning to do 30% of clients each of the first three weeks so that when there are unscheduled down days for weather, technicians don’t have to work on Saturday, Gagnon says. “We cannot control the weather,” he says. “Rather than browbeating technicians and thinking only of revenue, we’re making sure everybody gets home safely to their families every day.” 

The company’s human resources department also sends out hurricane preparedness checklists to each location to ensure the facilities are secure and employees are receiving full communication, Gagnon says. “We make sure managers have employees’ phone numbers,” he says.  

He adds: “Our clients are used to hurricanes down here. We’re in constant communication with them so we can do things that are safe.” 

Safety First: Field Operations During Weather Extremes 

How do pest management companies prepare for and execute their service plans during challenging weather-related scenarios? 

At The Bug Man in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, this starts with company President Layne Salvant and her management team reviewing the news before the storm and figuring out when it’s expected to make landfall—and whether there might be wind or other issues for a day or two beforehand.  

“We’re tracking that internally and making decisions,” she says. “That message will go out—we use Microsoft Teams as a form of communication—into different department teams.”  

She and her managers, if they have cellphone service, communicate during and after the storm to make plans for bringing their services back online as forecasts allow. 

Lloyd Pest Control in southern California monitors the news and local government information sources to keep track of where wildfires are spreading so it knows to avoid those areas, and it reschedules technicians for their safety, says Efrain Velasco, technical director. 

Technicians have tablets they use every day, and the company sends alerts specific to certain technicians, a region, or all employees as the situation requires, Velasco says. “If we find out something is going on at a specific branch, I jump on the phone, find out who is the route technician” to alert them, he says.  

Managers at Slug-A-Bug in Melbourne, Florida, monitor the weather and contact employees at home when warranted to let them know to stay home and make sure to tell their clients, says John Gagnon, wildlife/exclusion manager. If it’s raining on and off, technicians sometimes sit in their trucks and wait for the weather to clear. Given that they’re commission-based rather than paid hourly, “There’s a margin there to allow these guys to say, ‘I’m in a safe space. I’m going to wait this storm out.’ ” 

The company does regular training on potentially dangerous scenarios, including working in a hot attic, especially on the wildlife side, Gagnon says. “We are in attics for an extended period of time, and on roofs,” he says. “Rain and wind can knock you off a roof. We’ll postpone and reschedule if the weather gets too bad, especially if you’re beachside—metal roofs get saltwater coating on them, and they’re more slippery than an ice-skating rink.” 

At Rid-A-Bug Exterminating Co. Inc. in Hamptonville, North Carolina, the management group comes together and talks with employees out in the field while monitoring weather reports to determine what’s going on and decide collectively whether they need to delay work or continue, says Marty Roberts, vice president. 

“That’s a team decision,” he says. “We rely on local fire departments, police and sheriffs’ departments. They help us a lot. We do have a weather alert radio that we use also. In pest management, prevention is everything. You don’t wait for the problem to show up. You stay one step ahead and protect what matters most, and that’s our people.”