Rats invaded DMV call center in Fresno’s Manchester Mall. Workers say stench got them sick

The stench of dead rodents took over a Department of Motor Vehicles call center in Fresno for the last three weeks, say employees who work at the facility.

The nondescript office sits sandwiched between a luggage store and a candy shop at the end of Manchester Mall on Blackstone Avenue. The building, which has struggled to keep retailers and has several vacant suites, has struggled with rodent infestations for at least 10 years, said Abel Pedregon, a DMV representative.

“It’s disgusting,” Pedregon said. “No one should be breathing that air in.”

But in the last three weeks, employees say, the reek of rodent death became unbearable.

“It’s like they let the poisoned, dead rodents fester in the ceiling, and it’s making everybody sick,” said Tami Tana, a motor vehicle representative who’s worked for the department since 2012.

Tana said she was called in to work in the office from Oct. 9-13, even though a DMV spokesperson told The Bee that the department paused its in-person requirement on Oct. 2 due to the infestation. She said she filed a claim with worker’s compensation and went to see a doctor on Thursday for nausea, pain in her left nostril, headache, sore throat and dizziness. A manager erroneously told her she had to return to the office after her doctor’s appointment but later said she could go home.

“Putting our well-being and our safety in jeopardy like that, it pisses me off,” Tana said. “This has been going on for years, but I’ve never had symptoms like I did last week.”

One of Tana’s colleagues also said the stench was worse than it had ever been.

“It was awful. I’ve never smelled anything that bad in my life,” said Valerie Hurdt, another DMV employee. “It smelled like a dead person that had been sitting in the 110-degree heat for 10 days.”

DMV confirmed that the office had reported a rodent infestation to building management on Sept. 26. The source of the foul smell came from dead rodents stuck to glue traps that hadn’t been properly disposed of, a department spokesperson said. The management company previously used baited traps rather than glue traps.

Most of the call center’s 200 employees have worked remotely since the COVID-19 pandemic, although a handful who can’t remote work come in every day. Also, teams of about 10 to 12 workers rotate in for a week of in-person work once every six weeks. On average, about 56 people work from the office each day, DMV spokesperson Anita Gore told The Bee.

Due to the stench, DMV said the department halted the in-person six-week rotations on Oct. 2.

In contrast to the employees’ complaints, the department insists that the smell was mild and that the department acted swiftly to remedy the issue. The department chose not to send a staff-wide email to all employees at the facility about the rodent problem “because the smell by that time was faint and most employees were teleworking,” Gore wrote. “Employees who could not telework were offered to relocate or use an N95 mask.”

Scent bags hung from the ceiling throughout the office when a Bee reporter visited the site on Tuesday afternoon. The deodorizers were meant to extinguish any smell that came from glue traps that the property managers deployed to catch rodents, according to Sonia Huestis, a deputy director of the DMV’s customer services division. Rectangular rodent traps flanked each of the office’s three exits, and each trap was equipped with peanut butter cups to lure in and catch rats.

Huestis told The Bee that a team from the Fresno County Department of Public Health had visited the office earlier in the day Tuesday.

The carpets were recently shampooed to rid them of the stench, Huestis said, and pest management suggested that “decluttering” the office could help guard against future rodent infestations.

One hallway on Tuesday was lined with a handful of office chairs bearing a piece of paper that read, “TRASH.” Huestis explained that those chairs were going to be moved out of the building. Other workers used dollies to ferry filing cabinets and additional furniture into a separate room, which led out to a junk removal truck.

The northeast corner of the office, which is known for its persistent dead rat odor, smelled lightly of perfume on Tuesday afternoon. Huestis attributed the more pleasant smell to the scent bags. An industrial fan was still sitting on the carpet in the “rat corner,” though it was not running as people worked.

The DMV said it leases the space in Manchester Center from the property owner, Omninet Properties. Even though the state’s Department of General Services negotiates leases for departments, the departments themselves bear the responsibility for coordinating any maintenance needs directly with the lessor.

“DMV and the lessor bear responsibility for the upkeep of the building, each from a different perspective,” Gore said. “DMV has a responsibility to report issues of concern and the lessor holds responsibility for working with DMV to address issues of concern.”

An Omninet representative confirmed that the company owns the mall property and blamed the rodent problem on “certain construction that is going on in the neighborhood.” The Bee reporter who visited the site saw the suite next door was under construction.

“We have never had this problem before and we will do everything possible to remedy the situation,” wrote spokesperson Bahaur Sepehr. “We are using the best professional company to deal with it.”

The City of Fresno’s Code Enforcement Division, which would oversee the DMV facility and enforce health and safety codes, did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Bee. The Fresno County Department of Public Health deferred questions about the facility to the city’s code enforcement team.

“The DMV is not a facility we regulate and currently there is only one active food facility operating towards the Northeast entrance of the mall,” wrote Amber Ng of the city’s environmental health team. “This facility has been inspected and during the last routine inspection which occurred earlier this year, there were no violations noted that dealt with observing rodents or evidence of their presence.”

The Fresno Bee’s Thaddeus Miller contributed to this story.