A rat-infested home has plagued an Irvine neighborhood with rodents running around the streets for the last few weeks.
Resident Sandy Turner said rats mostly come out of the house at night and camp underneath nearby cars.
“We have videos of rats in the street, in our cars,” Turner said. “If we drive away, they will come out from the bottom. They’ve been chewing up wires. My concern is, really, we need to get rid of the rats. It’s a safety issue.”
Turner and her neighbors on Typee Way have made several calls to Irvine’s Code Enforcement Department. They were told that the homeowners would have to deal with the rat problem. Neighbor Elaine Duncan said she knows the family that lived in the house. Authorities took three people from the home to the hospital at the end of October, according to the Irvine Police Department.
“They had a lot of incapacity and financial issues, and some mental issues. That’s why it got to this level,” Duncan said.
Duncan said the apologetic family believed there were 300 to 500 rats inside the home.
“If anyone understands rat behavior, they multiply as we speak,” Duncan said. “In the last week, they might have doubled.”
Irvine issued a nuisance violation to the homeowners because of the rat infestation.
“They’re given notice of correction and they have about 30 days to fix that problem,” Officer Ziggy Azarcon said. “They’re given time to fix that issue.”
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