South Phoenix neighborhood taken over by bugs

PHOENIX (KSAZ) - It's the kind of thing that will make your skin crawl, people living in a south Phoenix neighborhood are battling a bug problem, a big one. The bugs are invading their yards and homes.

These bugs are everywhere moving in droves across sidewalks, driveways, and exterior walls. Residents aren't exactly sure what the bugs but blame a neighboring palm tree plantation for the infestation. They want the bugs gone before they march through their doors and into their homes.

Thousand of tiny bugs have invaded this Phoenix neighborhood near 69th Ave and Broadway. They're crawling on sidewalks, tree branches, even up to resident's front doors.

"It's kind of uncomfortable because you get that itchy feeling that they're all over you, that you have them in your hair, that you have them on your body," said Gavina Yatarola.

Yatarola has lived in the Sienna Vista neighborhood for five years, she and her husband Tom believe the bugs are coming from a palm tree plantation behind their house where a few trees were recently cut down.

"I was using the restroom last night, and a few of them came through the air vent and the ceiling light in the bathroom, and then the walls also they got somehow got back there," said Tom Yatarola.

The couple says most of the bugs have stayed outside and don't seem to be harming anything. But neighbors like Arnold Goode worry the bugs will invade their homes.

"Well my daughter she said yesterday when she left she said it looked like the sidewalk was moving because there were so many of them," said Arnold Goode.

Gavina believes these critters are "false chinch bugs" that migrate in huge groups every April. She's killed some with bug spray but wants all of them killed before they take over inside.