Richelieu, a town in the Montérégie region established on the Richelieu River and an immediate neighbour of Chambly, was the scene of an unusual intervention in this essentially residential sector: the exclusion of a bat colony in an elementary school. The school’s management had contacted our team urgently after a janitor had discovered, during his morning inspection, several bats on the walls of the school library. The presence of wild animals in an environment frequented daily by children required a rapid, discreet and completely safe intervention. Nova Extermination mobilized a team the next day to assess the situation on the ground and present a concrete action plan to the management and officials of the school board, in the interests of transparency and professional rigour.
Intervention in schools: specific protocol
An intervention in a school imposes strict and non-negotiable constraints: the work must be carried out exclusively outside school hours, the products used must be approved and safe for children, and the treated spaces must be returned in impeccable condition before the resumption of activities. Our technician carried out a complete inspection of the building on a Friday evening after the establishment closed. The bats had access to the interior through spaces between the false ceiling tiles and the load-bearing structure of the roof, which in turn could be accessed from the outside through defective ventilation seals. The colony, estimated at about twenty individuals, stayed in the technical space above the library and two adjacent classrooms. Consult our report on exclusion in public buildings for another example of intervention in an institutional setting.
The health protocol was presented to the management at the beginning of the process: no child or staff member was to have access to the areas concerned until complete decontamination and certification of the spaces. Informational notices were posted in the hallways and communication for parents was prepared in close collaboration with the management, emphasizing the preventive and non-alarmist nature of the situation. Our bat capture service is used to handling these delicate situations with tact, efficiency and a great sense of responsibility towards the school community.
Exclusion and security of the building
The exclusion was planned and carried out over a full weekend to allow for its full completion without disruption to school activities. The one-way exclusion devices were installed on roof fans identified as the main entry points to the colony. All gaps between the false ceiling tiles were temporarily sealed to prevent bats from moving to other areas of the building during the active exclusion phase. Our team carried out night surveillance during the first two nights to confirm the gradual and orderly exit of the animals via the devices provided for this purpose. The work to close the entry points also included the replacement of three roof fans with missing or severely damaged protective screens, providing a permanent source of entry without correction.
On Monday morning, before classes resumed, our technician carried out a thorough final inspection to confirm the complete absence of bats in the entire building. No animals were found in the treated areas or elsewhere in the building. The technical areas have been secured and the access hatches locked to prevent any future accidental contact by unauthorized persons.
Certified decontamination for educational environments
The decontamination was carried out according to a reinforced protocol, given the usual presence of children in this building and the stricter sanitary requirements applicable to educational establishments. The technicians, equipped with full-body suits and HEPA-filtered respirators, sucked up the accumulated guano and cleaned all the affected surfaces using an approved disinfectant that leaves no dangerous residue after complete drying. The soiled false ceiling tiles were removed and replaced with identical new elements. The decontamination of infested spaces has been certified by an official intervention report submitted to the school administration and the school board and made available to the health authorities in the event of a request or inspection. Our achievement in a comparable school illustrates our proven experience in this type of institutional context. The school board expressed its great satisfaction with the speed, professionalism and complete discretion of the intervention: the Richelieu school resumed its normal activities on Monday morning, without the students or their parents being unduly worried by this situation.