[dropcap size=big]'I[/dropcap] thought I was going to die,” Los Angeles Deputy City Attorney Liz Greenwood told NBC4, after contracting typhus in November 2018 she says from working at City Hall in downtown Los Angeles. "Who gets typhus? It's a medieval disease that's caused by trash."
The L.A. City Hall official was one of the 105 cases of flea-borne typhus that the Los Angeles County department of health said it documented last year, including 17 cases associated with the downtown L.A. outbreak. Those numbers do not include Long Beach and Pasadena.
It is virtually impossible to say with certainty that Greenwood contracted the disease from working inside the James K. Hahn City Hall East building on Main Street, a county health official said.
But that hasn’t deterred public employees working there from complaining about long-standing homeless encampments next-door. Since the outbreak was first reported in October, L.A. County public health officials have said typhus is hitting the homeless population.