Termites making a meal out of Apopka Police Station

APOPKA, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) - While Apopka police are out fighting crime, they're facing another battle closer to home: drywood termites. The city council is set to contract with local exterminators to rid the police station of the destructive little pests. Police Captain Randy Fernandez says they're taking every precaution in dealing with the critters.

“Through our routine inspections with pest control services we found some termites in the building,” Fernandez said, “so just out of an abundance of caution we're going to have the building tented so we don't have any issues.”

The exterminator would seal the police station in a huge tent and fill it with poison gas to kill the little bugs. They plan to do it over the Memorial Day weekend.

“It's a three day period, they're going to start in the afternoon and go over the weekend and have the building un-tented and back open for business,” Fernandez said, “that way we're not disrupting our services to the community.”

Fernandez stresses there won't be any change to operations or service while the work goes on. “The patrol operations will continue to run as usual, we have a satellite facility they'll work out of. If any arrests are made they'll go down to the jail so it's not going to impact the community whatsoever.”

He says aside from those functions the building would have been closed for the long weekend, anyway, and he says issues like this are common in older buildings like the police station.

“It was remodeled about 25 years ago. The building is much older than that. I don't know the exact date it was built,” he said.

The proposed agreement will cost Apopka nearly $22,000 dollars. It would also include spraying the building with insecticide and follow-up treatments.