TERMITES? No action from Landlord.

It seemed that we had done a good job getting everything tidy and the apartment seemed to be in great working order until i started to notice a little bug problem- spiders, a few small beetle looking things and little flying creatures (possibly gnats). Before I even had time to make a complaint I made another disgusting discovery. One day I walked into my room and saw what looked mud on my wall (about 2 feet from the head of my bed). Since I hadn’t seen it before and had no idea how mud would get on my wall I was a little suspicious. I got my roommate and she took a look and told me she had found something similar looking in the bathroom. After cleaning the "mud" off the wall of my room and the bathroom we noticed that under the mud were little tunnels, which in my mind, only meant one thing TERMITES. I’ve never had experience with termites so I decided to do some research and as soon as I came across an image of identical "mud" tracks on a termite page, I immediately called my landlord. This was all on Saturday the 25th in the early afternoon. I left her a message explaining the situation and even apologized for calling on a weekend. Now I understand termites don’t exactly constitute as an "emergency" but since they had holes into my bedroom I figured it was important enough for her to at least take 5 minutes to get back to me and call the exterminator as soon as she found out. Because the holes worried us, we decided to cover them with duct tape to keep whatever was inside from getting out. Sunday morning I wanted to check on the situation and I pulled back the tape and little white maggot type bugs came squirming our immediately- I hadn’t seen these before but was now officially disgusted. Since it had been over 24 hours and I still hadn’t heard back, I emailed her, figuring I should update her on the situation and make sure to stress the importance of the issue and even asked that she contact me as soon as possible to let me know what to do. 

After 2 nights of getting less than 4 hours of sleep total (for fear my bedroom might turn into a Stephen King novel) I was extremely peeved that I hadn’t heard from her. Finally on Monday afternoon I got am email response that thanked me for informing her, telling me this was a "HUGE!" deal and saying she had contacted her exterminator and was waiting to hear back from them but would update me when she heard from them. I emailed her back saying that if she let me know, I could free up any time to meet her at the apartment with the exterminator and also let her know the situation was so bad and disgusting that I had moved into a friend’s house.

Tuesday….. Heard NOTHING from her but because our rent was due I thought I would stop by her house to drop off the check and make an in person visit to push the issue. Her husband was there and after introducing myself, I explained the situation, to which he replied: "I’ve never heard of termites in Colorado" (after my hours of panicked research I now knew more about termites than I ever wanted to know and knew he was wrong) I replied: "Well, I did some research and apparently they are a problem in Colorado" him: "Can you catch one in a container for me and bring it back here?" I didn’t even need me to respond because I think the look of shock and disgust on my face said enough so he asked if he could stop by that night or today to take a look… and once again I repeated that I could be available for WHENEVER he had time. It is now Wednesday, late afternoon, and I have neither seen nor heard from either of them since.

I understand managing a lot of properties is a tough job but I’m still frustrated because I don’t know what to do and since the only thing keeping the bugs from piling into my room through the exposed nest is a piece of duct tape…. I’m not very comforted. I also suffer from allergies and asthma and read that termites to affect these issues. My father keeps telling me we need to find a way to move out and get another place and I’ve read over our lease and for the most part it just says that management must fix problems within a reasonable amount of time, and that the renter must pay for repairs and then makes a list of things that cause damage that the landlord says they cannot be blamed or charged for (these are either weather related issues or tenant related issues but don’t include bugs or other types of damage). According to law the house must be livable and safe and only issues that threaten those standards can be enough to take or threaten legal action or work out a termination to our lease.

Because of the termites, my roommate and I realized we should check the rest of the apartment for any type of damage and now that I know what I’m looking for it does seem that there is wood damage around the place, strange looking holes and of course, the sagging floor (my drawers actually open on their own). I would get my own exterminator but since there are 3 other units, checking mine out and spraying for them wont really solve anything because they can’t be fixed unless all units are treated. We did let our neighbors know about the issue and told them to keep an eye out (I’m hoping they too find something and that way I’m not the only one pressing the landlord).

Does anyone have any advice or know more about this type of issue? Does this constitute the kind of issue that would let us terminate the lease?