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The blog posted by 'Jonny Bravo' ...
circulated by this site on 22nd December 2008, gone on the 23rd ...

Sunday, November 23, 2008

The Rats
The first picture shows a corner of the BGA warehouse, in the picture you can see a PIPE approximately 6 inches in diameter, this is one of the entrie points for the Rats in the warehouse. The second picture shows a large vented area this is also an entrie point for the rats and only a few feet down from the pipe. The third picture is of a vent on the back side of the buildind where the rats will climb the wall and come in through the broken vent. All of these location are just behind the back wall of the Marketing room in the warehouse. No attempt has ever been made to fix and or plug these holes.

Every person who has ever worked at BGA knows there are rats in the warehouse, and those same people have all heard the stories of the warehouse Manager killing the rats and taking them out to the garbage, some the size of a large fat cat. There have been stories of whole families of rats with baby's killed found in the marketing room are all true. The question that keeps coming to my mind is why doesn't the health department of Bermuda shut this place down. Just from the health stand point of the employee's it has to be a violation, but to continue to let this place service the public is a disgrace. Would the public buy food from this company if they knew that less then 20 feet away is a dead rats sitting in the garbage. I don’t think anybody would want to buy a bar of chocolate knowing that someone was killing rats less then 10 feet away. Isn’t this how diseases like Bubonic plague, Rabies and Typhoid are transmitted.

Here's the facts about rats. A female rat can have a litter of rats up to seven times a years and every one of those rats from each litter can have thier own litter of rats within the same year.

Rats carry diseases such as
Leptospirosis
Eosinophilic Meningitis
Murine Typhus
Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS)
Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium
Rat-bite fever (RBF)

BGA's warehouse
Sitting on the top of Mills Creek, literally on top of concrete pile-on's, at least twice a year the city comes around and clears out the creek as it runs behind Gorhams, forcing the rats to leave their homes while the city renovates. During this time the rats move into the BGA warehouse, through a hole in the Marketing room on the floor where BGA store such things as marketing samples for the stores, also including baby food that they hand out as gifts to expecting mothers along with other food items that they hand out to the elderly. For those who want the exact location the rats enter the Marketing just enter the room and go to the far right corner of the room, there you will find a small closest with a very old electric pump in the floor. Don't tell anybody but the rat have a deal with management, management never tries to plug the hole and the rats won't tell the world that BGA management of from the same species. Now this has been going on for years and years and the rats have been getting into the building the same way for years and years, you would think that someone would stop the rats from coming in the building by closing off their one main entry point or at the very least stop leaving a grocery store full of food for them to eat when they get there. BGA's solution to the problem is to put down sticky traps with some of Mcvities best cookie (because you if Rats love them you will love them to) a trap that doesn't poison the rats or even hurt them it just causes the rat to become stuck, and once they walk on to the surface the struggle to get off drives them crazy and eventually kills him. A nasty way to die for any animal, and when a rats dies and it sits for a couple of days the stink is some you never forget, never.

The Birds
The BGA warehouse is infested with Birds, sparrows, and these birds are eating the merchandise and then depositing the waste on every box that is brought into the warehouse. All of them were born and raised in the BGA warehouse and they are not afraid of people, machines or even upper the management. These little disease passing machines are the cause of all of the maggot infestation of the Dog food on the Island. The following are a few fatal diseases humans can get from exposure to sparrow droppings. There are over 30 people picking in the warehouse, touching and breathing in what the birds drop every day and BGA provide no protection from these little poop machines. Every vent shown in these pictures is an entrance and excape route for the birds.

Histoplasmosis is a respiratory disease that may be fatal. It results from a fungus growing in dried bird droppings.Here's some additional information for all those sick people with breathing problems. This stuff is being spread all over the island. Unless the stores like Marketplace, Lindos, the Phoenix stores and all the others, all of the gas stations are disinfecting every delivery from BGA. Something I'm positive isn't happening.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/histoplasmosis_g.htm#Who%20gets%20histoplasmosis

Candidiasis is a yeast or fungus infection spread by pigeons. The disease affects the skin, the mouth, the respiratory system, the intestines and the urogenital tract, especially the vagina. It is a growing problem for women, causing itching, pain and discharge.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/candidiasis_inv_g.htm

Cryptococcosis is caused by yeast found in the intestinal tract of pigeons and starlings. The illness often begins as a pulmonary disease and may later affect the central nervous system. Since attics, cupolas, ledges, schools, offices, warehouses, mills, barns, park buildings, signs, etc. are typical roosting and nesting sites, the fungus is apt to found in these areas.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/cryptococcosis_t.htm

St. Louis Encephalitis, an inflammation of the nervous system, usually causes drowsiness, headache and fever. It may even result in paralysis, coma or death. St. Louis encephalitis occurs in all age groups, but is especially fatal to persons over age 60. The disease is spread by mosquitoes which have fed on infected house sparrow, pigeons and house finches carrying the Group B virus responsible for St. Louis encephalitis.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/sle/Sle_FactSheet.html

Salmonellosis often occurs as "food poisoning" and can be traced to pigeons, starlings and sparrows. The disease bacteria are found in bird droppings; dust from droppings can be sucked through ventilators and air conditioners, contaminating food and cooking surfaces in restaurants, homes and food processing plants.
http://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/

E.coli. Cattle carry E. coli 0157:H7. When birds peck on cow manure, the E. coli go right through the birds and the bird droppings can land on or in a food or water supply.Besides being direct carriers of disease, nuisance birds are frequently associated with over 50 kinds of ectoparasites, which can work their way throughout structures to infest and bite humans. About two-thirds of these pests may be detrimental to the general health and well-being of humans and domestic animals. The rest are considered nuisance or incidental pests. A few examples of ectoparasites include:Bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) may consume up to five times their own weight in blood drawn from hosts which include humans and some domestic animals. In any extreme condition, victims may become weak and anemic. Pigeons, starlings and house sparrows are known to carry bed bugshttp://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/

Chicken mites (Dermanyssus gallinae) are known carriers of encephalitis and may also cause fowl mite dermatitis and acariasis. While they subsist on blood drawn from a variety of birds, they may also attack humans. They have been found on pigeons, starlings and house sparrows.

Yellow mealworms (Tenebrio molitor), perhaps the most common beetle parasites of people in the United States, live in pigeon nests. It is found in grain or grain products, often winding up in breakfast cereals, and may cause intestinal canthariasis and hymenolespiasis.West Nile Virus while West Nile is technically not transmitted to humans from birds, humans can get infected by the bite of a mosquito who has bitten an infected bird. The obvious lesson is that the fewer birds there are in any given area, the better. This translates into a smaller chance of an infected bird in that area, a smaller chance of a mosquito biting an infected bird and then biting a human.

BGA's Neighbors
BGA's warehouse is right next door to a hobby farm with two donkeys and two dogs the size of a small horse that produce what smells like a lot of manure and on any one day there are hundreds of birds hanging around this property, at the end of the day they head back to the BGA warehouse for the night where they eat contents of the warehouse and then drop their waste as they walk and fly around their home. What kinds of diseases are they passing to the pubic and why isn't the health department doing something about this place.

Bugs
Every month on the first Tuesday on the month BGA has pest control fog the entire warehouse with a chemical poison that is suppose to kill the bugs but not effect the people and every month the workers in the warehouse and in the office area complain of feeling sick and that they have severe headaches for weeks after the warehouse is fogged. If this chemical is causing this kind of effects on the staff of BGA who work in an open area all day with the doors wide open at both ends of the building can you imagine what this poison is doing to your family when you take it home from the store, I know BGA doesn't wash anything before it leaves the warehouse and I doubt BGA has told any of the stores on the island the all of their products are covered with a deadly insecticide that could kill you if your sensitive enough. Have you noticed family members getting headaches or getting sick for no reason. This could be the reason, everything sold by BGA is covered with this poison. You may not see it but its there, anybody with asthma should be washing any item purchased from BGA.

Next the BGA warehouse
This building is owned by MarketPlace and is in a major state of disrepair. The roof has more holes in it then dirt. The electrical is pre-world war II and in most cases the power receptacles are not grounded. None of the circuit breaker panel are marked with descriptions of what device is connected to what breaker. And there isn't an electrician in Bermuda that would touch the existing wiring with a fifty foot grounded pole. There are hundreds of wires hanging from the walls that nobody knows if they are active or not, best guest some are, some are not . The building is structurally unsafe. Complains about the buildings safety have been ignored by the owner and even after a structural engineer was brought in to assess the damage MarketPlace owner still refused to fix the problems. So if you visit the BGA warehouse don't park you car on the north east side of the build, the only thing that is holding up that part of the building is the powdered rust. The Bermuda fire department has warned BGA to upgrade certain alarm equipment BGA management has refused. The Bermuda fire department has warned BGA that should there be a fire in the warehouse they will not attempt to go into the warehouse to put it out. The building is not save and the fire department will not risk their people trying to put out a fire in this building. So how does this build get away with all these violations to safety and health?

Most if not all of the support beams over the loading bay doors on the north side of the building are completely rusted away and are no long a structural supporting that side of the building. My guess as to why the north east corner of the building has not fallen up to this point is because all of the loading doors on that side of the building are rusted shut and they are holding up the rusted out support beams. (just a guess)Every air vent on the north side of the building is rusted out and has become the main entrance for the birds. You can watch them enter the building throw these vents like an airplane landing on a run way. The vent almost look like they were made to let the birds in.

The Roof
There are several very large plastic rain barrels on top of the main freezer used to collect water every time it rains, there are a lot of them and they protect the food in the candy cage from being rained on. every time it rains someone from the warehouse has to climb up on top of the freezer and bring down the buckets and empty them. That person has to climb through years of bird feces, died birds, rat feces, died rats, bugs, died bugs, abandon furniture, garbage, dust, dirt, cables. And if that person doesn't show up for work on a day when it rain there's a good chance the freezer will get flooded. This picture clearly shows a large amount of water on the carpet that has been leaked from the roof.

The Freezer
The freezer is environmentally obsolete still using Freon and an under sized compressor if this company was using this equipment in north America they would have been shutdown in the 90's for polluting the environment. Just another example of how Bermuda law has controlled this major contaminator. In Canada and in the US these types of polluters to the environment were shutdown in the early 1990's with the ban on Freon gas into the environment.Third floor - Health and BeautyThis floor is the highest point in the building, added on as an after thought, its constructed of plywood and is slowly being deconstructed by termites who are eating the entire floor and leaving their waste in the form what looks like saw dust but is actually fecal pellets at the base of the wall. The first floor to get rained on the ceiling tiles are black with mole and the carpet stained from always being wet. Their are people that work on this floor that have serious health problems that could be related to the conditions but management doesn't seem to care as that would cost money to fix. The area always smells like mold, its always damp and cold with the air-conditioning.little known fact about termites, the queen can lay up to 86000 eggs a dayThe ceiling tiles on the third floor and for most of the building are water stained because of the damage caused by the roof leaking. There are other more severe areas where the tiles are partly covered with black mold, a form a mold that can be deadly. Customer Service on the main floor comes mind and almost every person in that area has some medical problem possibly related to the working conditions.Did I mention the place is infested with some kind of smart super cockroach that seems to be immune to the bug sprays that pest control keeps trying to kill them with. There is also a bug that looks like a moth but pest control doesn't know what it is and their deadliest bug spray has been less than 100% effective against killing it but they keep pumping it into the building in an effort to get rid of it. The Cockroach's are so smart that they will actually come out, look around and watch what you are doing while you work. Their not afraid of anything or anybody and they are not dumb.

The Air-conditioning
There are three air-conditioning power plans working in the BGA office area and all of them are breaking down due to age and a complete lack of maintenance over the years but that isn't the worse part. the ventilation system used to carry the cold air around the building has almost as many holes in it as the roof. For those who care about the environment that means that BGA and MarketPlace are spending more money to cool the roof of the building then they are the office area. The only good thing about that is the ventilation ducts in the building are so full of dust, mold and bugs as well as bird dropping that if anybody did fix the vents and the air-conditioners they would probably kill everybody in the building by cutting their ability to breathe.

The Warehouse floor
During the summer time the warehouse floor turns into a skating rink and for most worker this slime work environment where you can fall on your head at any second is to much to take. The fork lifts slide around on the wet floor and when the humidity gets high the place is like a swamp. This place is the perfect breeding ground for bacteria and every day your daily food gets stacked on it.
Their are people working for BGA with Asthma, COPD and possibly emphysema, all respiratory problems related to exposure to mold, dust mites, insecticide poisoning, rat fecal contamination, and the possible spread of multiple diseases by the constant exposure to bird feces, as well as the bugs that live on birds. On top of all of these problems for the staff at BGA, every one of these problem can also be an exposure to the general public because none of these problems have ever been addressed by the Bermuda health department nor has anybody at Bermuda Pest Control advised BGA on the potential health problems of sending contaminated products out to the stores with out first cleaning them off. Does the management of BGA care about the health problems of their own people. No. Management has repeatedly been asked to do something about the mold and to replace the tiles that are covered in mold but these requests continue to go unheard even when employees in those areas have turned up with cancer and COPD management still refuses to fix the problems and ignores how ill the people are getting.

Is Bermuda safe from BGA, Good question.

Are there no health regulations in Bermuda, how does a company that sells food productions to almost every person in the country get away with this many health violations without anybody doing something about it.

If this company was allowed to have a business license in a country such as the United States or England, the number of fines this company would receive for health and safety violations would put them out of business in a week. This place is making their employee's sick and I have no doubt that they are causing a lot of other people to be sick on this island.
Now your probably asking why does the management of BGA or the Bermuda Government do something about this place. Good Questions.
Has anybody ever seen a representative from the Bermuda Government come out to BGA and do an inspection..........Anybody.................ever?

If you have send a note let us know when and by which department.
I know that BGA sells food, cookie, candy, chips, drinks millions of dollars worth every year, you would think that if you sold anything with a food stamp on it that a food inspector would come out and inspect whether the facilities are clean and safe. Nobody I know has ever seen an inspector and if there has been an inspection in the last ten years the guy must be walking around with no sense of smell, completely blind with a total loss of hearing to miss how bad BGA's warehouse is.Ask yourself when you buy a drink from the local bar, did they wash the can before they opened it and mixed it with your favorite alcohol chances are they didn't and you got the full treatment from BGA's on going pest control. 365 Days of poison pellets for the rats and poison for the birds and bugs and you get it all for free. If your buying bottles of water I wouldn’t drink it from the bottles.The only inspection done at BGA I have heard of is the fire extinguisher's and I must admit they are all up to date. unfortunately there isn't one person in the entire building that knows how to use them or which one to use. BGA has a number of fire extinguisher's large and small, liquid chemical and dry chemical when their office staff were asked which one they would use to put out and electrical fire, nobody got it right. When the same question was asked of the warehouse staff they first of all didn't know where the extinguisher's were but they also didn't know there was a difference. The main power feed for the building is in the warehouse and supplies power for the lights, forklifts, freezer, computers, everything electrical. All of the fire extinguisher's in the BGA warehouse are liquid chemical based extinguisher's which means if someone tried to put out a fire that happened to start at the main electrical feed into the building or at any of the electrical breaker boxes or at the main electrical feed for a transformer to one of the forklifts, BGA would be picking pieces of that person out of the wall and the hospital would be trying to figure out how to treat someone with severe electrical burns if they lived.

The day the roof caved in

Did you know BGA's front entrance leading up the stairs to the second floor caved in during a rain storm. The entire ceiling dropped and if anybody had been under it they would have been killed. Was the problem leak fixed? of course not BGA doesn't own the building Marketplace does, the same kind of patch work was done to fix but hey the old material must have been up their for over ten year and they timed it right, it waited until the weekend to fail. Maybe the next time this happens it will also wait until the weekend. If you have ever gone up the stairs to the second floor you may have noticed a big piece of drywall ripped out of the wall that was from the ceiling failing and Marketplace wont pay to fix it so that piece of drywall covers the hole.
Their have been several occasions when the metal retractable doors on the loading docks have completely fallen off the wall, if someone had been under it they would have been killed. The only way to install a new door was to us a forklift to drag it into the warehouse and then lift it into position. The doors weight thousands of pounds.

Lead Batteries

BGA uses forklifts to move their products around the warehouse there is nothing knew about that all companies like BGA do that what is unusual is that BGA is running equipment that is over 30 years old and is polluting the surrounding environment. Almost every one of these old pieces of junk is leaking some think, if it isn’t oil its fluid from the batteries. If you go out by BGA's garbage bins you will find old forklift batteries decaying in the sun leaking battery acid and lead in the ground around it. And these batteries are not small some of them are close to a ton in weight. Does Bermuda know this kind of toxic waste is growing in the middle of their island.

One of these days someone is going to have a fatal accident in this warehouse, its going to be the management fault because they ignored the warnings and its going to be the Bermuda governments fault because they didn’t close this death trap down. I have seen condemned building in better shape then this warehouse and one of these days a customer is going to walk though the loading dock doors and the whole thing is going to fall on his head and it wont be an accident it will be negligence’s.

BGA's Pharmacy Warewhouse

That's right BGA has their Pharmacy warehouse in the middle of Pemboke. Less than three blocks away from the main warehouse on Mills Creek the Pharmacy warehouse is located on Bakerylane.
The picture shown here shows a ramp going to the second floor, inside is the BGA magazines distribution area and on the other side of the parking lot is the Pharmacy warehouse. Once inside you will notice that there is no security what so ever. There is a video camera on the wall no is not being recorded or monitored. This place houses some of the most dangerous drugs on the island as BGA supplys to every Pharmacy and of course Hospital on the island.
I know what your saying, you have to put it some where and your right, but do you have to leave the door wide open.
Do you have to leave the trucks unattended.
How easy would it be to rip this place? Well its been done.
There are no alarms, not even a manual panic alarm.
No security, There were video cameras installed but the CEO Mr. John Tomlinson had them removed, he didnt want anybody watching or recording the activities of the company. There is as I mentioned a video camera as you enter the parking lot, one over the door to the parmacy warehouse, the video quality is so bad a target at a distance or one that is moving would be completely unrecognizable. Then there is a good quality camera in the main parking lot, its unmonitored and not setup to record neither is the one over the door. Both were placed in the parking lot to allow the people in the two warehouse areas a way to look around the parking lot before exiting and going to their cars. The Camera's have absolutely no security value.
The employee's are always propping open the doors to go out for a smoke something BGA does not discourage nor do they consider it a security violation.
So to the residence of Bermuda lets make these people welcome, walk over to Bakerylane location and walk down to where you see Rayclan and across the lane to the Redlaser computer store, keep walking until you see Signworkx and then walk up that ramp and ring that door bell and say hello or just walk right in, the doors are usually open pumping fresh air-conditioned air out in to the parking lot.
Maybe they will invite you in for some good old BGA coffee.
And to all the drug dealers on the island, dont worry about the possiblity of getting caught, this place has already been ripped of in the past, the owners have there own agenda and catching one of their own isnt part of that agenda. BGA has been ripped off for thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of drugs. The police were never called. The security was never updated or improved and the governement ministry in charge of BGA license to operate on the island was never informed. I know this island is a little backward and yes the governement and its law enforcement agents are extremely corrupt but I wonder if the governments that allow BGA to purchase drugs from their counties know that BGA stores drugs link morphine in a place that is less secure than your house. At least for most people that come to Bermuda they learn really quickly to shut the doors or you will be robbed. Apparently the management at BGA has achieved that level of brightness.

Look at the working conditions! Third world countries have similar conditions.
 

Just look at the mold and the stains no wonder people are getting sick. Is this from the rain or from the ventlation system, or the rats?

You have all seen black mold in condemned building in the US. This is the same black mold and people are breathing it everyday!!

The black stain is mold and it is coming directly out of the ventilation system. For the people with asthma it can kill. Their are people working in the warehouse today that are suffering from COPD a lung dease that has been proven to be caused by the direct exposure to black mold.

Notice how the mold is all over the tile and is being blown out of the vent into the air.

This picture is from the Mills Creek Warehouse, third floor althought every tile in the building is in a similar state. Several people work in this environment. What is interesting is that the Pharmacy department was moved to another building because of the horrific working conditions and because of the damage being caused by the building conditions.
Naturally the people working in this area are non management Bermudians. As with all of their warehouse counter parts in the Mills creek warehouse they have no value, so safty conditions are not only non-existent but the company goes out of its way to demonstrate its contempt for their employee's. The Bermuda prison has better health conditions than at the BGA warehouse.

Click for more information Look at how the black mold craws along the wall, if this was in any home in the US the UK or Canada they would be evacuating the people and condemning the building. This mold is a killer anywhere and everywhere in the world, the question has always been this, why aren't any of the Bermuda government agencies doing something to protect the workers at BGA and why are they allowing this exposure out into the general public.

	More stains which means more water leaking into the ceiling area. Replace one tile it just come back. What kind of company makes their employees work under these conditions. Who did these repairs a three year old. Is that an electrical cable coming out from where the water stains are, is it live?

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