If you don’t know someone who has been bugged by a bedbug infestation, chances are good that you will within the next year or two.

The blood-sucking nocturnal pests, which have been making a comeback nationally for the past decade, are emerging with a vengeance in Greater Des Moines.

Dr. Stuart Mitchell, a medical entomologist serving as a consultant to Springer Professional Home Services, said the volume of bedbug calls the company is handling has increased “well over 500 percent” from last year. And the problem is likely to get worse before it gets better, he predicted.

About the size and shape of an apple seed, the reddish-brown insects hide in bedding, furniture and crevices in bedrooms, emerging to feed on human blood at night. Their bites are not known to spread disease, but cause large, itchy welts on the skin.

Once nearly eradicated in the United States, the insects are again being found in all 50 states. According to a national survey released in July by the National Pest Management Association and the University of Kentucky, 95 percent of exterminators surveyed said their companies had dealt with a bedbug infestation in the past year.

A committee of the Metropolitan Advisory Council (MAC), led by Polk County Supervisor E.J. Giovannetti, is looking at ways local governments in Greater Des Moines might assist property owners in dealing with the problem.

“This thing is kind of like a ball of yarn,” Giovannetti said. “The more you pull, the more you get.”

Giovannetti said it’s likely the MAC will coordinate a meeting of landlords to get their input.

“The problem arises because more folks are buying and selling used furniture, I’m told. You can eradicate bedbugs from an apartment, and then (the tenants) bring in a couch that’s infested,” he said.

An idea under discussion is to develop an inspection and certification process so that landlords and tenants can be assured that furniture is free of bedbugs before it can be sold or moved into a unit.

“My own personal view is that we’ve got to do something, probably some method of eradication and inspection,” Giovannetti said. “Unfortunately, many folks affected by this are not in a position to deal with it themselves.”

In Greater Des Moines, both commercial and residential properties have been affected, but apartment complexes have been the predominant sites for infestations, Mitchell said. Springer is handling between 10 and 15 bedbug jobs each week, he said.

“It can vary from one unit to many units.” he said. “We’ve seen multiple unit complexes that have been up to 90 percent infested.” In those cases, eliminating the pests is “certainly more challenging,” he said. “You have a timetable to follow, coupled with the need for tenant and management cooperation, which is generally pretty good.”

Rather than using chemicals, Springer uses a treatment process in which it heats an affected area to between 120 and 140 degrees for several hours to kill the bedbugs and their eggs. The process is more effective than chemical treatments, but is also more expensive, Mitchell said.

One of Greater Des Moines’ largest landlords, Conlin Properties Inc., has had about 1.5 percent, or about 100 of its more than 6,500 units, infested and treated so far, said owner Jim Conlin.

“It’s certainly a problem in Des Moines,” said Conlin, who estimates he has spent $125,000 so far in heat-treating infested units. “Frankly, it’s quite expensive for the initial charge, but the contract calls for a much lower charge if they come back to re-treat them,” he said. “Of course, that’s not something that we programmed into our expenses.”

There’s no way for apartment owners to know whether they have a bedbug problem unless they have their units professionally inspected, Conlin said. “I bet there are complexes out there that have 50 percent bedbugs, because if you don’t eradicate them, they multiply rapidly and they spread,” he said.

“Even though we check every unit, we can’t advertise that we’re bedbug-free. I can do everything I can to provide a safe, clean environment for my tenants, but there are no guarantees. I can’t tell my tenants I can protect them from nuclear attack, either.”

Though hotels across the country have had problems with bedbugs, a board member of the Iowa Lodging Association said he has not heard of any Iowa properties reporting them yet.

“If there was anything that had occurred, (the board) would hear about it pretty quickly,” said Rick Gaede, general manager of the Renaissance Savery Hotel in downtown Des Moines. “I have heard nothing from anyone at this point.”

Jeff Lipman, a Des Moines attorney who is representing about 300 bedbug victims in a class-action lawsuit, said a property owner’s actions are the measure of liability. His firm is representing elderly and disabled residents of Elsie Mason Manor and Ligutti Tower, who the suit claims endured bedbugs in their units for the past three years with little action until recently by the owners.

“The issue isn’t that you have the bedbugs; that doesn’t impose liability,” he said. “You have to look at when did they know about it, and what did they do about it? As long as they’re doing what’s recommended by the pest control operator, they’re not negligent.”

Lipman said he anticipates “an explosion” of litigation once his and a few other cases around the country are decided. Lipman, who is seeking class-action suits, said he receives probably a dozen calls a week about individual bedbug cases, which he refers to other attorneys.

More lawsuits could lead to a reassessment of the need for specialized bedbug insurance coverage, said Bob Skow, CEO of the Independent Insurance Agents of Iowa.

“I have heard a few rumors in the market, that maybe this is a business opportunity,” he said. “But I think these won’t end up being offered, because who would buy it? Those who are negligent.”

Property owners’ existing liability coverage would pay for any instance in which an owner was sued for negligence related to someone being bitten by bedbugs, Skow said.

“In a general sense, I think the courts would find it hard to find you liable if you were doing your due diligence,” he said. “Clearly, in most policies there is coverage for liability for that.”

Skow said the most frequent question from property owners is whether they’re covered for the cost of treating the property for bedbugs. “Unfortunately, the answer is no,” he said.

Meanwhile, Springer has expanded its staff by about 20 percent and purchased additional equipment to handle the influx in business, Mitchell said. “It’s not a bad thing for us,” he said.

Though more awareness built from online information sources and social networking may provide advantages that Americans didn’t have when fighting bedbugs decades ago, Mitchell anticipates a lengthy battle ahead.

“I think it will take years to gain the control that we had prior to this re-emergence in the mid-’90s,” he said.