What to Expect
The Basics
CTS Decon -- crime and trauma scene
decontamination -- involves cleaning up dangerous material.
This could mean the biologically contaminated scene of a violent
death (homicide, suicide or accidental) or the chemically
contaminated scene of a methamphetamine lab or anthrax-exposure
site. Crime scene cleanup cleaners come in and restore the scene to
its pre-incident state.
When a violent death occurs in someone's home, the family typically
doesn't move out of the house. The cleaners' job is to remove any
sign of what happened and any biohazards that result from such an
incident. Federal regulations deem all bodily fluids to be
biohazards, so any blood or tissue at a crime scene is considered a
potential source of infection. You need special knowledge to safely
handle biohazardous material and to know what to look for at the
scene -- for instance, if there's a thumbnail-size bloodstain on
the carpet, there's a good chance that there's a 2-foot-diameter
bloodstain on the floorboards underneath it. You can't just clean
the carpet and call it a day. You also need permits to transport
and dispose of biohazardous waste. Companies that clean up crime
scenes have all of the necessary permits, training and, perhaps
most important, willingness to handle material that would send most
of us running out the door to throw up in the bushes.
What can you expect from your Crime Scene Cleaners?
Below are the steps involved in the clean up process
1. Contact Service - When you
call our service you will be both efficient and sensitive. We
understand that at this time you are grieving. We will get all the
information we need from you with a minimum of intrusion into your
grief.
2. Arrange a Time to Come Clean That Works
for You - usually the sooner the better but we will work
with you.
3. Upon Arrival - Crime scene
cleanup cleaners are usually "secondary responders" -- they arrive
after the police, firefighters, paramedics and coroner. The scene
is typically already secured, but the clean-up crew needs to
confirm this and continue to make sure the public can't enter the
scene, because it's a biohazard.
4. What the Cleaners Will Bring With Them
- Crime scene clean up comes with it's own special
equipment needs. These include
a. Personal
protective gear - a non-porous, one-time-use suit, gloves, filtered
respirators and chemical-spill boots
b. Biohazard
waste containers - 55-gallon heavy duty bags and sealed,
hard-plastic containers
c. Traditional
cleaning supplies - Mops, buckets, spray bottles, sponges, brushes,
etc.
d. In addition
some other equipment can include:
i) Ozone
machine (to remove odors)
ii) Foggers
(to thicken a cleaning chemical so it can get all the way into
tight places like air ducts, usually for odor removal)
iii) Hospital-grade
disinfectants (bleach, hydrogen peroxide)
iv) Industrial-strength
deodorizers
v) Enzyme
solvent (to kill bacteria and viruses and liquify dried
blood)
vi) No-touch
cleaning system (to clean blood-coated surfaces from a safe
distance -- includes heavy-duty sprayer, long
scrubbing
brush, wet vacuum)
vii) Razor
blades (to cut out portions of carpet)
viii) Shovels
ix) Truck-mounted
steam-injection machine
x) Chemical
treatment tank (to disinfect and store matter collected by vacuum
systems)
xi) Carpentry/restoration
tools - sledgehammers, saws, spackle, paint brushes
xii) Ladders
xiii) Camera
(to take before-and-after shots for insurance purposes)
xiv) Van
or truck for transporting all of this stuff (and hauling waste to
disposal site after clean-up)
The thing about crime scene clean up is that the scene has to be
truly clean, not just apparently clean. In addition to the
infection that can result from bloodborne pathogens, any bodily
fluids that remain in floors, carpets, baseboards or walls can lead
to mold, bacteria and fungus, which can cause sickness months or
years later.
5. Issues Involved with Your Particular
Type of Cleanup
i) Violent death
(homicide/suicide/accidental)
In the case of a
violent death, there are bodily fluids to deal with, each tiny drop
carrying germs, bacteria and, possibly, infectious diseases. In
something like a suicide where a person cuts his wrists or shoots
himself in the head, there's tons of blood; if someone is shot in
the chest, though, there's very little blood because the lungs suck
it in. But no matter how much of it there is, the cleaners have to
approach it as if it were carrying bloodborne pathogens like HIV,
hepatitis, herpes, E.coli and hantavirus.
ii) Decomp (a decomposing body)
In a decomp, the
scene is usually not quite as spread out as in a violent death, but
a decomposing body can be even more gruesome than a suicide. A body
that has been deceased for days, weeks or months has gone through
some changes. In decomposition, the body swells, insects move in,
the organs digest themselves and the skin liquifies. It's not
pretty, but most people will tell you that the sight of a
decomposing body can't compare to the smell.Most people are brought
to their knees by that smell, which is partly a result of ammonia
gas released during decomposition. The coroner removes the body
before the clean-up starts, but usually leaves behind lots of
liquefied body matter and odors as well as maggots that are
carrying the person's blood. In addition to cleaning up the mess,
cleaners sometimes have to track down and kill (by burning) any
maggots that scurry out of the body and try to hide, because
they're carrying germs and might be carrying viruses.
iii) Methamphetamine labs
Cleaning of a
methamphetamine lab, while not gory, is often a lot more dangerous
to clean up in terms of health risks. The laundry list of poisons
used to make street-grade methamphetamine (including acetone,
methanol, ammonia, benzene, iodine and hydrochloric acid) leaves a
toxic residue that coats and infuses every surface and stays in the
air. Most of these poisonous substances are absorbed through the
skin, making a meth lab one of the most dangerous places a person
can walk into. Exposure to a meth lab can cause reproductive
disorders, birth defects, blindness, lung damage, liver damage and
kidney damage, and that's just for starters. The scene remains
toxic indefinitely unless it's properly cleaned -- an apartment
that housed a meth lab can make its tenants sick a decade after the
lab has been removed. Proper clean-up of a meth lab involves
disposing of everything porous and everything that can't be
submerged in detoxification chemicals (several times). Crime scene
cleanup cleaners get rid of all furniture, cabinetry, light
fixtures, carpeting, electronics ... basically everything that
isn't part of the structure. And in the worst cases, they also
dispose of most of the structure -- they sometimes have to pull up
all of the flooring and gut the walls, removing all of the drywall
until nothing remains but studs.
6. How Long Will It Take? - To
truly clean the scene of a messy homicide, suicide, accidental
death or undiscovered death and restore the area to its previous
state can take anywhere from an hour to 40 hours. It all depends on
the "degree of trauma" and the amount of biohazardous material at
the site. Clean up after a methamphetamine lab can be even more
extensive and take longer.
7. Removal of Evidence -
Regardless of the type of scene, the final step in any cleanup is
disposing of the evidence. This is actually a more complicated task
than it may seem. You can't put hazardous or biohazardous waste in
regular trash dump. Crime scene cleanup cleaners need a special
permit to transport it. To dispose of it, in the case of the blood
and gore they have to pay (typically by the pound) to burn it in a
medical-waste incinerator. Some incinerators have minimum amounts
they'll burn, so the cleaning company might have to pay to store
the refuse in a sealed, refrigerated area until they've collected
the minimum amount. In the case of poisonous chemical waste, you
can only dump it in special areas not accessible to the public,
which costs additional cash. Transporting and disposing of waste
can be a big percentage of a clean-up bill.