STD outbreak forces shutdown of city's Zone

"Creeping Crabs" run rampant among secret sinners

HARTFORD, Conn. (RWN) - A new strain of sexually transmitted disease has surfaced in Hartford, forcing authorities to close down the city's Zone and take an aggressive public-health stance in the 24 hours since the outbreak was discovered.

"This is an utter mess," said Jawad Rodrick, Hartford's Commissioner of Public Health. "We've got 250 confirmed cases and probably another 1,000 suspected cases. We'll be up to 1,000 confirmed cases in the next 24 hours, I'm sure."

The commissioner and other authorities in the city have taken a step never taken in an American city - closing down the Christian Quarter, the Zone, where anything often goes.

"We didn't have much choice in the matter," Rodrick said. "This is a sexually transmitted disease and most of the tawdry, anonymous sex happens in that part of the city. So we're closing it, sending in mobile decontamination and medical units."

Yesterday morning, Hartford-area hospitals reported at least 50 cases of a breed of pubic lice that burrows into the skin and multiplies throughout the body. In an advanced case, a victim will have skin that looks like it's blistered and popped. The burrowing lice - dubbed the "Creeping Crabs" by a doctor at Hartford City Hospital - can incubate for a week before making them selves known, and appear to be able to transfer with simple contact.

It can be treated with a strong regimen of antibiotics.

"One of our biggest problems has been in the suburban communities, where married men - and a few women - don't want to admit that they visited the Zone for some adult relations," Rodrick said. "Instead of going to the hospital, they're just passing it along. We had one case - praise Allah that he checked himself in finally - who contracted it from a prostitute during a bachelor party, had relations that same night with another prostitute, then had sex with his wife the next morning and sex with his secretary that night."

Officials are hoping that an aggressive public campaign, combined with shutting down the Zone for a few weeks, will be enough to stop the "Creeping Crabs."

In the meantime, a few Zone merchants went to City Hall to complain.

"The mayor won't see us, of course," said Marty Kennesaw, owner of The New York Strip House and leader of the group that went to City Hall. "But no one here will, and that's the problem. How are we supposed to survive if we have no cash flow?"

Another merchant, David Fontaine, who operates a string of sleep-it-offs in the Zone, has another view. "I'm going to lose money, huge money," he said. "But if we were open, what would people do down there? Half the people I know down there are scratching themselves raw."

One man, prominent Hartford attorney Steven Hansen, has died from disease, when the lice overburdened an immune system that had been weakened by pneumonia. Hansen's wife declined to comment on how he contracted the disease, or if she had also contracted it.


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