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Providence Journal 8/30/00 Back
Small caravan follows the trail of the West Nile virus
By ANDREW GOLDSMITH
Journal Staff Writer
WESTERLY - Most of Westerly's streets were already deserted by the time the spraying began, at 7 Monday night.
Even so, a police cruiser with its lights flashing, blasting short bursts of its siren, led each of the two pesticide trucks through town.
"Residents, the truck spraying for mosquitoes will be spraying in five minutes," Town Manager Pamela Nolan announced over the
speakers of a police cruiser.
The pesticide - Sumithrin - is only slightly toxic to humans, but the state recommends that people avoid contact, anyway.
The trucks weaved through 83 miles of road to cover the required two-mile radius around Sherwood Road, where a dead crow infected with the West Nile virus was found 13 days ago.
Across Narragansett Bay, officials were following the same procedure in Newport, where the virus also appeared.
West Nile -which can lead to inflamma
tion of the brain - is rarely fatal in humans, but it can kill the elderly or sick. It lives in birds, American crows in particular, and can be carried from birds to humans by mosquitoes.
Westerly officials expected Monday's work to take four hours.
Each truck was assigned to half the spray area, but police officers and Department of Public Works employees improvised their
paths.
At one point, Nolan's cruiser turned a corner to find itself face to face with one of the trucks, emitting a mohawk of gray mist that officials said would dissipate 150 feet in every direction.
Nolan's cruiser, and the unmarked car behind it, immediately shifted into reverse.
Phil Rosetta was one of the few residents outside on Benny Drive when the cruiser passed. He said he had some reservations about the spraying.
"We're concerned about environmental
protection, but I guess human life is more important than anything," he said.
Rosetta and most of the other residents police encountered headed home. A couple walking a dog, realizing their route home would take them directly through the spraying, waited it out in a motel along the road. One man got a ride home in a cruiser.
Monday night was not the first time this summer - or even this month - that Westerly mosquitoes have come under attack.
State and town officials used a helicopter Aug. 4 to drop nearly 5,200 pounds of the larvicide BTI on 700 acres of swamp near Chapman Pond.
The drop came after officials said they found mosquito larvae "well exceeding" acceptable numbers. They also detected the Highland J virus in mosquitoes trapped nearby.
Highland J is not a threat to humans, but it indicates that conditions are ripe for mosquitoes to breed and carry potentially dangerous viruses, such as those responsible for Eastern equine encephalitis.
EEE was discovered in Westerly for three consecutive summers, beginning in 1996. Evidence of the disease was also found here in 1993, the year a Middletown boy died of the disease.
Trey Houtchens, 14, was one of three people to succumb to EEE in Rhode Island since 1983. The disease is fatal to about half the people it infects.
Even in dears when the town's mosquito population has been seemingly disease free, town and state officials have often sprayed or taken other steps to reduce their numbers.
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