HONOLULU -- Because of staff shortages state health inspectors had not inspected a Chinatown market where a community activist videotaped rats scurrying over produce for a year and a half before the incident, KITV has learned.

KITV's Keoki Kerr first reported about shortages in health inspectors during an investigation last month.

The video that community activist and blogger Larry Geller shot the day before Thanksgiving Day inside Pacing's Market at the Kekaulike Market complex in Chinatown showed large rats everywhere.

Slideshow: Images: Rats Caught On Tape In Chinatown Market

"The rats were running under the tarps and over the tarps. They were jumping up into the baskets," Geller said.

Rats could be seen jumping into and out of baskets of bananas and running under tarps that covered produce in the food market at night when the store was closed.

"It's just an unbelievable thing when you first see it, and then the concern sets in that this isn't something funny," Geller said. "This is something we really ought to be concerned about, especially with a market this size, which is half a city block."

After Geller put his video on the Internet Wednesday, the state Health Department sent an inspector, who cited Pacing's Market for evidence of rodent droppings and rodent damage to food packaging.

Customers said they are upset.

"How come too much rat over here? What's the problem? Why they can't remove the rats?" shopper Bibiana Delong asked.

"I guess that lady forgot to cleanup and just happened to have that incident recorded on the video," You Market owner Paul Min said.

Min owns another produce stand in the complex. He said business is already down because of what he called an isolated incident with one market doing a bad job keeping its place clean.

"It's impacting the whole Chinatown, not only produce, the restaurants, jewelry stores, and everybody think we got rats all over," Min said.

On Thursday, pest control crews installed new rat traps outside Kekaulike Market.

"It is a difficult situation, because it's hard to ever completely eliminate rodents," state Health Deputy Director Larry Lau said.

Lau said that there are just nine health inspectors on Oahu to handle nearly 6,000 markets and restaurants. He admitted that the market had not been inspected since June 2008 because of staff shortages.

"We'd like to have more, but we'll just have to do the best we can with what we have," Lau said.

State inspectors plan to return to the site on Friday for a follow-up visit to make sure corrective actions have been taken. The market could face fines of up to $1,000 a day if it does not fix the situation soon.