Bedbugs found in Empire State Building

FIRST they crawled into trendy New York clothing stores like Hollister and Abercrombie & Fitch. Then they turned their attention to the Time Warner headquarters.

Now an infestation of bedbugs has been found at one of New York City’s best-known landmarks, the Empire State Building, the New York Daily News has reported.

The pests were discovered last week in an employee changing room in the basement of the iconic skyscraper, prompting a call to exterminators. An Empire State Building official said the bugs got into the building by way of an employee’s clothes.

“Like so many other buildings in New York City, the Empire State Building had a small incident of bedbugs,” Empire State Building spokespersons said in a statement. “The occurrence was specific to a uniform storage area in the basement of the building.”

The affected area has been full cleared of bedbugs, the statement said.

The infestations at Hollister and Abercrombie were reported in early July, and Time Warner cleared up its bedbug problem earlier in August. New York City recently allocated $500,000 to eliminating the bedbug problem.