Monday, January 25, 2010

Work of crime cleaners and their equipments

Crime scene cleaners are usually "secondary responders" -- they arrive after the police, firefight¬ers, 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. The most common crime scene clean up scenes include Violent death (homicide/suicide/accidental), Decompose (a decomposing body), Methamphetamine labs .

In all of these clean ups, the cleaners arrive with the same equipment. Once they assess the scene and the damage, they have a lot of tools to choose from to help them return the room, apartment or house to its pre-incident state.
Their gear typically includes:

Personal protective gear - a non-porous, one-time-use suit, gloves, filtered respirators and chemical-spill boots
Biohazard waste containers - 55-gallon heavy duty bags and sealed, hard-plastic containers
Traditional cleaning supplies - Mops, buckets, spray bottles, sponges, brushes, etc.
Hard-core cleaning supplies - Can include:
Ozone machine (to remove odors)
Foggers (to thicken a cleaning chemical so it can get all the way into tight places like air ducts, usually for odor removal)
Hospital-grade disinfectants (bleach, hydrogen peroxide)
Industrial-strength deodorizers
Enzyme solvent (to kill bacteria and viruses and liquify dried blood)
No-touch cleaning system (to clean blood-coated surfaces from a safe distance -- includes heavy-duty sprayer, long scrubbing brush, wet vacuum)
Putty knives (to scrape up brain matter, which dries into a cement-like consistency)
Razor blades (to cut out portions of carpet)
Shovels (in about two hours, large amounts of blood coagulate into a Jell-O-like goo that can be shoveled into bags)
Truck-mounted steam-injection machine (to melt dried brain matter that cleaners can't remove with putty knives)
Chemical treatment tank (to disinfect and store matter sucked up by vacuum systems)
Carpentry/restoration tools - sledgehammers, saws, spackle, paint brushes
Ladders
Camera (to take before-and-after shots for insurance purposes)
Van or truck for transporting all of this stuff (and hauling waste to disposal site after clean-up)

0 comments:

Post a Comment