The woman who called was a relative and tried to describe the scene. She explained that there was some blood on the kitchen floor and “some flies”. Years of biohazard cleanup service has taught us that people rarely describe the scene accurately. In previous jobs we’ve been told there was just a few spots of blood only to arrive and find a blood bath. Other times people have described what sounds like a triple homicide yet we find only small traces. After arriving at the scene, it was clear that the description we were given was no exception.
As we walked up to the house we began to notice a humming sound growing louder the closer we got. We thought maybe an appliance had been left on or something. Looking into the kitchen the source of the humming became clear; hundreds and hundreds of flies. In our history of crime scene cleaning, this was by far the biggest swarm of flies we had encountered. They were bouncing off the windows, walls, cabinets and appliances. Humming mystery had been solved; it was as if we had walked into a bee hive. And under the swarm laid the reason the hive was raging. Had we not been told the circumstances on the phone, we would have guessed that more than one person had passed away in that kitchen. We were not prepared for the amount of blood and body fluids we encountered that day. It had gone under the cabinetry, behind the appliances and had seeped into the the cracks of the vinyl flooring.
After removing the blood, body fluids and insects, we had to pull all the vinyl flooring, baseboards and cabinet toe boards. Located in the area of heaviest contamination was the stove. We had to clean, decontaminate and carefully remove it from the room. Start to finish the entire job took approximately eight hours; a long day in the world of crime scene cleaning.
A Bee Hive??
The call came in that someone had passed away in their kitchen, but hadn’t been found until weeks later. “Unattended death” is what we call it. The neighbors had begun to notice the odor that always accompanies the decomposition of blood, tissue and body fluids.