Ian Walters pointed to a termite-infested wall outside a makeshift lab on a longtime Army airfield southeast of Los Angeles.
The lab belongs to the US fruit fly sterilization program, which dispatches four jets most days to release millions of sterilized male Mediterranean fruit flies over the LA basin. The aim: Slow a record surge of insects threatening produce in California, the country’s top grower of fruits and vegetables.
Walters and his staff coordinate the effort from a collection of old, dilapidated portable trailers, connected by decks corroded by dry rot. Two units that housed the sterilized flies and ...