Television has romanticized the crime scene and made it a venue for dramatic entertainment, but these Hollywood sets are a far cry from the harsh realities that await at a true site.
Disaster and crime scene cleaning is not only cleaning for health, it is cleaning to help people move on with their lives. And nobody understands this better than Jeff Darr, a bio-hazard and crime scene cleaning specialist.
About eight years ago, a friend of Darr in the funeral business became aware of a need for specialized cleaning services from sympathizing with traumatized families who needed cleaning to move on with their lives. With a new purpose, he founded a bio-hazard and crime scene cleaning business and recruited Darr, whose background was in computer science and accounting and happened to be exploring career alternatives.
Since then, Jeff founded Crime Scene Services, Inc. based out of Monroe, North Carolina. On call 24 hours a day, Darr's operation responds to a multitude of bio-hazardous situations from homicide and suicide cleanup to meth labs even airplane crashes. "In this line of work you need to be prepared for anything," he says. "I've been at a job where the police have needed to shoot a couple dogs to enter the house; then, the dogs bled over the entire house until they finally died. The next day it could be a body that's been decomposing for weeks. Another day you may be cleaning a car loaded with decomposing eggs and fruit. It's just the nature of the business."
His first four years, cleaning scenes like these meant a cache of disposable mops, sponges, wipes and way too much elbow grease. A tile floor covered with sludge-like coagulated blood meant getting down on his hands and knees and scrubbing. Blood spattered carpet and upholstery often needed to be removed, rather than simply restored.
Darr knew there had to be a better way and discovered No-Touch Cleaning, an all-in-one tool combining an indoor pressure washer with chemical injection and a wet/dry vacuum system. This system empowers him to deep clean and sanitize contaminated surfaces without coming in contact with them, a big plus in this line of work. When he encounters a contaminated area, he's able to spray the affected surfaces with cleaning solution in a low-pressure setting. Once the chemical has sufficiently dwelled on the affected surfaces, Darr switches the spray gun to high-pressure and blasts the areas with fresh water to loosen and suspend all the bio-hazardous matter. Then he simply extracts the contaminated solution with the system's integrated wet/dry vacuum to completely remove all soils and sanitize the area, while the tank safely contains all bio-hazardous materials.
When the job moves to carpet and upholstery, so does the KaiVac. Rather than removing contaminated carpet unnecessarily and creating added expenses, Darr is often able to utilize KaiVac's optional carpet extraction wand and restore it to its original condition. Switching to the optional hand-held upholstery extractor, he's also able to sanitize and restore contaminated home and auto upholstery.
Once this discovery was made, there was no turning back. He now has three KaiVacs and wouldn't show up to a job without one. "I don't know how people do a clean up without one to me it's in my bag of tricks," he says. "You never know what we're walking in on, and I like to be prepared for anything."
Darr's bag of tricks isn't intended just to cut corners and save time, he equips himself to be able to do the best work for the needs of the families.
"It just gives me a better chance to serve the needs of the family - to clean more and do a better job," he says. "Using a KaiVac, I never get call-backs, I'm able to thoroughly clean and get it done the first time."
And getting it done the first time is a very sensitive matter to the families. They don't need any more reminder of what they're trying to cope with.
Cleaning crime and accident scenes is a gruesome business, but thanks to Kaivac's No-Touch Cleaning systems, Jeff Darr is able to clean better, faster, and safer. To him, showing up to a job without one would be the same as being empty-handed.