Jan. 11, 2000

By Jesse Oppenheimer 

		LOS ANGELES (APBnews.com) -- For Mike Nicholson of Clean Scene Services, nothing beats a good decomp. Shotgun suicides, multiple homicides and "pack rat" evictions, they all have their moments. But when that call comes in to sanitize an apartment where the tenant has continued to reside for weeks after death, Nicholson knows he has found his true vocation.
Michael Nicholson and his Clean Scene Services van		Nicholson's labor niche is trauma-scene waste management. Donning protective gear and armed with cutting-edge weapons of disinfection, Nicholson and his team battle the biohazardous residue of violent crimes, heinous accidents and hidden deaths that no one else in Los Angeles will touch.

Removing blood and body fluids

	Jesse Oppenheimer/APBnews.com
	Clean Scene goes to work.

The officials do their investigation and handle the removal of bodies, but not the residue -- and that's where Clean Scene Services comes in.

Since Jan. 1, 1998, it's also been the law in California: If there are large amounts of blood or body fluid at an accident or death scene, the state now requires that "a registered trauma-scene waste management practitioner" such as Nicholson handle the cleanup.

Nicholson and his assistants come to the scene wearing their work clothes: company T-shirts and paramedic pants, disposable Tyvek protective coveralls, hepafilter masks, latex gloves and shoe covers.

Once everything contaminated by biohazardous residue is removed and disposed of in red bags and special containers, it's time to clean and disinfect. In addition to hands-on scrubbing with hard-core cleansers like Microban and Enviricide, Nicholson uses ULV fogging, air scrubbers and, for major jobs an ozone generator, a stand-alone unit that changes contaminants into purified water vapor and recycles the air.

Although Nicholson maintained that "you get used to it," he admitted a decomposing body can be rough: "You might do a decomp and not smell it at the time. Then you take off the mask -- and it's in your hair, your skin, in the hairs of your nose. The odor just permeates everything."

Homicides comparatively easy

Clean Scene often gets called in several times a week on suicides and decomps, but homicides "are few and far between," said Nicholson. Over the years, however, he has worked about 40 homicide scenes, including several particularly gruesome cases where everybody at the house had been killed.

In one notorious incident, a respected family man fatally shot his wife, two kids and their friend in different rooms before jumping to his own death off the overpass of the freeway.

A brutal tragedy, yes, but not a particularly challenging assignment for Clean Scene Services.

"To be honest, it wasn't that bad at all," Nicholson said. "We didn't have to remove any flooring or anything. The whole job took only about five or six hours."

After taking care of the biohazard, which is legally required, Nicholson will do additional cleaning for an extra fee, if desired by the client.

A fascination with death

For all the blood and gore that fills Nicholson's workdays, he remains nonchalant about it.

"It doesn't get to me. Ever since high school I've been in the death business."

It all started when an elderly neighbor passed away and Nicholson found himself fascinated with the activities and services that went into motion following his death.

"At the mortuary I thought he was alive before he came here -- and now they had him. What happens to him now? I started thinking about all the other bodies there; those people had lives too. They were plumbers and doctors, they had daughters and sons. Every death had a story and a life behind it. How did they die and how did they live?"

He knew right then he wanted to work in the field.

"I went to the mortician and said, 'I'm getting ready to graduate high school, what do I need to do to get a job here?'"

From taxiing cadavers to trauma scene cleanup

The mortician informed him they were all filled up. But he tipped Nicholson off to a first-call service -- a mortuary taxi service for cadavers -- that was hiring.

"I had a job the next day packing up remains," recalls Nicholson.

"We drove station wagons with tinted windows and two gurneys in the back, on call 24 hours a day. We'd do house calls, go to convalescent hospitals. Any ones which weren't coroner's cases, we'd go pick them up and take them to the mortuary."

After years working for various first-call services around Los Angeles, Nicholson got a job at the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office. There he worked in the histology lab, keeping track of the many "hold jars" -- glass containers preserving organ samples from autopsy cases -- that remain in storage.

Nicholson loved the job but eventually felt overworked and underpaid. Soon he was dreaming about starting his own business. He considered launching a first-call service, but people suggested he get into cleanup. He had already done quite a few of those jobs on the side, and after two years at the coroner's office, Nicholson resigned and struck out on his own.

Nicholson took a class at the University of California-Los Angeles called HAZWOPER -- Hazardous Waste Operations Emergency Response -- and became Haz-Mat certified. He invested in equipment and bought the first of two Clean Scene Services company vans.

"Getting established was a lot easier for me than for most people," Nicholson said. "I had been working for the coroner and with all those mortuaries. I had a lot of contacts already."

Getting the business started

Still, it was a slow start, and at first the company was only getting a few jobs a month. Now after five years in the business and the new state law in effect, Clean Scene averages at least one job a day. Because of the law, Nicholson now gets frequent calls from the Department of Transportation and the California Highway Patrol, mainly to clean up messy accident scenes.

Clean Scene Services is a family business for the most part, employing his wife, Carol, her brother and Nicholson's two nephews.

Cleaning up after pack rats

If there's anything that can remotely disgust the seasoned Nicholson in his line of work, it's the pack rat -- that curious person who never disposes of anything, whether its newspapers, garbage or human waste.

He remembers the king of all pack rats.

"The county sheriff refused to go in there," Nicholson said. "The fire department came down and looked at the project, which was in East L.A. They said, 'No way, we're not going in there.'"

Clean Scene Services took the job. Once inside, it only got worse.

It took Nicholson and a five-person team four days to do the job. The refuse they cleared from this small one-bedroom apartment filled up three 40-yard trash bins.

Disgusting perhaps, but just another job, said Nicholson: "You have all your protection on -- you just get it over with. The mess doesn't get to me."

The human tragedies

But sometimes the people do. Like the old couple who lived in the mobile home.

"The wife was sick, and the husband really couldn't take care of her anymore, he was just too old. They were going to go to separate convalescent homes. So the husband, when his wife fell asleep, shot his wife and then he shot himself. They just didn't want to be separated. That was so sad.

"The blood and the tissue -- that doesn't bother me at all. But thinking about people being in this kind of helpless position -- that gets to you. I feel so sorry for them."

Nicholson finds his job most rewarding when he can make survivors of such human tragedies feel better.

"After we finish cleaning and sanitizing, people feel more comfortable. Even though it doesn't solve all their problems, it's a little bit easier for them. It makes me feel good to be able to go in there and say, 'I'm here to help.'"

Jesse Oppenheimer is an APBnews.com correspondent.

* Article edited for content *