Exclusive: How did California DMV clean up dead rats in its Fresno office? Emails detail delays

Emails and other messages from within a California Department of Motor Vehicles call center in Fresno are shedding light on how the state agency handled an infestation of rats that sent numerous employees to the doctor for headache, nausea and dizziness.

The communiques were obtained through a California Public Records Act request and included 13 email threads from the DMV concerning the issues at the call center at the Manchester Center mall. Records from the city of Fresno’s Code Enforcement Division were also obtained that detailed an inspection of the DMV’s leased property.

The emails paint a more detailed picture of how a few dead rodents festered into a stench that one employee described as “a dead person that had been sitting in the 110-degree heat for 10 days.” The employees, represented by SEIU Local 1000, say the rodent problem existed for years but that they alerted their union representatives when the stench became unbearable and asked them to intervene.

Although a DMV manager initially submitted a complaint about the smell on Sept. 26, Omninet Capital, which manages the building, didn’t call in its pest control contractor for a week, the emails show. The emails also reveal that five call center employees filed workers’ compensation claims, and two went to the hospital, as a result of the stench.

It appears that the building’s management also did not install air scrubbers until nearly two-and-a-half weeks after the complaint was originally lodged.

DMV spokesperson Anita Gore said that during the week of Oct. 2, the call center had “paused” its requirement for employee teams to work in-office for one week every six weeks.

However, employees later said that their managers did not communicate this change directly to them.

When asked by an employee about the pause in rotations, one manager told the employee, “We were never informed,” according to a Microsoft Teams message obtained through the public records request.

“I asked this in our meeting yesterday and was told it was fictitious information,” the manager wrote.

Gore did not acknowledge the screenshot of the Teams message, nor did she answer requests for a response to the manager’s accusation of false information.

Employees were concerned that rodent droppings and decaying carcasses could lead to infection with “hantavirus,” a respiratory illness spread primarily by certain types of rodents, including rats and mice. (Cases of hantavirus are exceedingly rare, and only 850 have been detected in the U.S. in the last 30 years.) Rodents shed the virus in their fresh urine, droppings or saliva, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and humans can contract the illness by inhaling air that contains infected droplets.

Below is a reconstructed timeline of how the DMV, Manchester Center and Omninet Capital responded to employee complaints about dead rodent stench in its Fresno Contact Center office. The timeline is based on documents obtained by The Bee via a Public Records Act request.

Sept. 26: Rodent stench reported

2:05 p.m.

Leaders at the Fresno Contact Center emailed Manchester Center leadership to call attention to the rodent stench in the office. The manager who wrote the email says her colleague usually opens work order tickets, but the colleague wasn’t in the office that day and she couldn’t figure out how to log in to the work order app herself.

“There is a BAD odor in the north entry hall,” wrote Rosalind Davis-Gonzalez, program manager for the Fresno office, in the email to Sandra Cortez, Manchester Center’s director of marketing and business development. Manchester’s Chris Conover was also copied on the message. “I will open a ticket on our side but if we can get it checked-out I would appreciate it.”

2:16 p.m.

Davis-Gonzalez submits a work order request using the DMV’s ticketing support system for building management issues at leased facilities.

“Bad odor in the north hall way gets stronger as you get to the restrooms you can smell it slightly as you enter the north east side of the work area,” reads the work order request.

The ticketing system automatically generates email notifications to the DMV’s Facilities Leasing Unit, the Manchester Center’s management team and the lessor/owner of the building, Omninet Properties.

Sept. 28: No word from building management

10:39 a.m.

Davis-Gonzalez submits another ticket regarding the rodent smell in the office.

“Strong rodent like smell coming from north side of office,” the request reads.

Oct. 2: Building management responds

10:44 a.m.

Davis-Gonzalez tells building managers that the rodent smell is back and is particularly odoriferous on the north side of the building.

“The managers who sit in that area and the employees who are in office are smelling something bad,” she writes.

11:48 a.m.

Kimberly “Kimmie” Tyler, another senior-level DMV manager in the Fresno office, submits another maintenance request regarding the rat odor.

12:26 p.m.

Tyler sends a follow-up email to Manchester’s Cortez and Conover in addition to the ticket.

“I sent a ticket over and I know you are extremely busy, so sorry for emailing as well. I just have agents who are complaining and one is leaving already due to the smell,“ Tyler wrote, adding a sad-face emoji.

5:04 p.m.

Tyler sends another follow-up email to Cortez and Conover.

“Hi there. Just an update on the smell. One area is good now, but there is still a very strong odor in another area.”

5:39 p.m.

Cortez responds: “Our maintenance team has made a couple rounds, checked traps and areas. I have placed a call to our pest control to do a site visit and see if they could guide us.”

Oct. 3: Employees told to telework for day

9:07 a.m.

Davis-Gonzalez replies to Cortez’s update from the previous day. She said the office had fans running to circulate the air and tried moving workers from one side of the office to the other, but the smell was still strong enough that workers were calling out sick.

“This is really starting to affect my onsite staff we had a few go home sick yesterday due to the smell,” she wrote. “If we can get some scent bag’s we would appreciate it.”

12:16 p.m.

Davis-Gonzalez sends a manager-wide email to a mailing list titled “CPD Fresno Call Center Manager Contact.” The email informed managers of the rodent situation and instructed them to send workers home to telework for the remainder of the day. The workers were instructed to return to the office the next day.

“If you have team members in office that are able to telework let them go home to finish off the day at home due to the smell, and returning to the office tomorrow. They are sending maintenance out once again to keep searching for the source of the odor until it’s located.”

1:28 p.m.

A follow-up message from Davis-Gonzalez expresses hope that the building management team will locate the source of the smell that evening when they investigate the space.

“Manchester will be working this evening to remove all the ceiling tiles to find the source of the smell so hopefully the smell will be gone tomorrow!! Please let your team members know, I will follow up with Manchester tonight to make sure that we are good,” she wrote. “Thank you all for your patience with this on-going issue.”

Oct. 4: Telework allowed as smell persists

9:26 a.m.

Tyler sends the following message to Manchester building management to inform them that the DMV office still smells of rodents.

“Was maintenance able to search all over above? There is still an area with the smell. :( sorry to start off the day like this. Appreciate your help.”

10:02 a.m.

Cortez responds, saying she and Conover will “swing by shortly” to see what they could do. She also cautioned Tyler and Davis-Gonzalez that employees need to immediately stop leaving “inviting amounts of food” in their cubicles and shared spaces.

10:30 a.m.

“If you have office personnel that can go home and telework for the reminder of the week send them home,” Davis-Gonzalez wrote to the Fresno managers. “Manchester is working diligently to get the smell under control however there is still an odor in the office in certain areas stronger than others.

“For those employees and managers who remain on site please move to areas that aren’t affected by the smell for the time being.”

DMV spokesperson Anita Gore originally said that the Fresno call center had “paused” its six-week in-person rotations during the week of Oct. 2. However, employees said their managers did not communicate this message to them.

1:45 p.m.

A member of the DMV’s facilities leasing unit writes to the building management team to request that their pest control contractor not use poison or pellets to kill rodents and instead use glue traps in order to avoid further deaths in the walls and ceiling.

“We are all aware that having the rodents die in the walls has been an ongoing issue,” wrote Elizabeth Patrick, a staff services manager with DMV’s facilities leasing unit in Sacramento. “From our end, we will be discussing the food at the desks and requesting that food and sweets are only kept in air tight containers in the breakroom.”

5:39 p.m.

A representative from the building’s owner promises to fix the problem.

“We are committed to resolving this issue and understand the importance of the situation,” wrote Grayson Ishimatsu, operations manager for the building owner, Omninet Capital. “We plan on installing metal mesh barrier enclosures above the ceiling grid to prevent further entry.

Oct. 5: Employees request workers’ compensation

9:15 a.m.

Patrick responds the next morning to emphasize the “severity of the concerns” that the DMV raised.

“We have 5 employees request Workers Comp paperwork and 2 who went to the hospital,” wrote Patrick. “We need to ensure that we are not continually having these smell related issues in the future. We do appreciate the measures that your team have taken but the dead rodents in the building just can’t be the norm for this office going forward.”

Oct. 9: Smell improves but lingers

1:49 p.m.

Tyler writes to Cortez to tell her that the office “definitely smells better,” but asks if they can keep the “big fans” running overnight for a couple of days to further eradicate the smell.

Oct. 12: DMV orders air scrubbers

3:53 p.m.

DMV manager Stacey Monazzami notices a faint whiff of rodent odor near the north entrance to the office and submits another work order.

“Ongoing issue with decaying rodent smell coming from dead rats in the ceiling. There is still a faint smell by the North side door that enters into the training area. We are requesting scent bags for that area, as well as the automated training room and the quality control room.”

4:25 p.m.

Patrick requests air scrubbers for the Fresno call center to get the lingering smell out of the air.

“Apparently the air purifiers that were sent the previous week emitted a chemical smell and did not work well for this office,” she wrote. “Air purifiers with a charcoal filter that circulates the air would be helpful.”

Oct. 13: Fresno code enforcement inspection

9:05 a.m.

The director and general manager of Omninet Capital, Roland Molimard, weighs in. He tells the DMV managers via email that he and Conover, plus Davis-Gonzalez, did a walk-through of the office earlier that morning and did not notice any rodent odor except in the northeast corner of the office. He thanks the team for their cooperation.

“Air scrubbers are will be mobilized this afternoon. Additionally, deodorizers and sanitizers above and below the ceiling will be applied,” Molimard writes.

12 p.m.

An officer from the city of Fresno’s Code Enforcement Division inspects the DMV workspace and finds “no physical indicators of a rat infestation.” He inspected the main office space, the break room, the trash enclosure outside the building and also the exterior walkways (the latter of which was lined with rodent traps).

“No feces or urine trails were observed anywhere in the DMV workspace,” wrote Richard Salinas in his write-up after the inspection.

Oct. 17: Droppings but ‘no signs of any rodent infestation’

11:30 a.m.

Salinas returns to the DMV office to inspect the inside of the drop ceiling. He used a ladder to climb up and remove ceiling tiles, stuck a flashlight into the space and looked around for any signs of rodent droppings or urine. He “could see no signs of any rodent infestation” in any of the six areas of the ceiling that he checked.

“Throughout the DMV workspace I detected a strong scent of either air freshener or some type of mild cleaning solution. I did not see any air freshener devices or cleaning solution on the floor or anywhere else in the workspace,” Salinas noted in his write-up.

Salinas did find a few mouse droppings on a ceiling tile in a small equipment storage area. He advised the maintenance team to place traps there and check them daily.

3:30 p.m.

Manchester Center and Omninet blamed the rodent problem on nearby construction at what used to be the old Sears building. Salinas inspected the property and found “some sparsely spaced rat and mouse droppings in the area.” Although most were old and covered in dust, a few were relatively fresh.

“I could not detect any physical signs of a rodent infestation,” Salinas wrote in his notes.

“I will be following-up with monitoring of the Manchester Center over the next month,” concluded Salinas’ report. “I will also confirm that appropriate exterminator services are employed by the Manchester Center.”

Oct. 19: Odor dissipates ... almost

9:34 a.m.

Tyler submits a final maintenance request and reports a “faint rodent odor” near the men’s restroom.

10 a.m.

Building management tells Tyler that they will ask housekeeping to “do a drain flush/cleaning to assist with odor.”

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

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