NYC unleashes rat death squad to gas vermin with carbon monoxide, bury them in tree-pit graves

They’re on a mission to put the city’s vermin problem to bed.The Adams administration is unleashing an $877,000 rat death squad to find the rodents, gas them to death with carbon monoxide and bury them in and around the Big Apple’s 600,000 tree beds.The Street Tree Bed Rat Mitigation program will include a specialized team of a dozen exterminators, park workers and others with inspecting tree beds and deploying carbon monoxide inside rat burrows – where “rodent squatters” will meet their ends with their tunnels turned to graves, officials said at a news conference on Sunday.“By cleaning up trash and hiring a team of experts to clear out burrows while caring for our trees, we are reclaiming public space, fighting rats, and improving quality of life for all New Yorkers,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement.“Our administration continues to build on the work we are doing to end the dominance of trash and rats on our streets.”The gassing process boasts a 95% kill rate for seven days, takes about three minutes and does not require a license to operate the proper equipment, Adams said.Officials said the gas doesn’t pose a risk to humans or non-rats, and the noisy equipment used to deploy the carbon monoxide will be at least 10 feet away from the foundation of nearby buildings.The latest initiative in the war on rats – followed by the containerization of 70% of the city’s street trash and even a rat birth control program – is set to put an end to the “historically exploited” street tree beds used by vermin as a breeding ground, officials said.“As a lifelong New Yorker … my main concern was always the tree beds,” Prospect Heights resident and Sterling Place Committee on Rat Mitigation (SCRAM)  member Mark Abbott said at the news conference at Stroud Playground.“At night, [rats] would come out and they would cross into people’s yards – you were afraid to walk down the streets at night because you never knew when one of these thin...