It’s human nature to be morbidly curious about the bad – and disgusting – parts of life.
Hearing about a murder, a sudden death or drug den often sets us off thinking about what it would be like to witness those things as part of a nine to five job.
But after the emergency services leave these places, who is left to pick up the pieces and clean up the homes that have become houses of horror?
Often, it’s families and landlords, who normally cannot safely deal with rubbish, blood, bodily fluids, decomposition, faeces or dangerous used needles – and that’s where extreme cleaners step in.
While crime scene and extreme cleaning might sound like something you’d only hear about in a TV show, it’s a crucial service that’s needed everywhere, not just in the movies.
One of these people who has been working in the extreme cleaning business for over 35 years is Mike Telford, 63, of Longtown.
In 2008, Mike set up Border Extreme Cleaning after he spotted a niche in the market while running his pest control business.
Realising that many landlords would be left to deal with nightmarish amounts of rubbish and filth after pests were removed from a property, Mike decided to start taking on the extra work to clean up these dangerous places.
Three months after Mike set up his business, a then 16-year-old Nathan Smith, now 31, of Carlisle, called looking for a job and the duo have worked together since.
They trained in everything from crime scene cleaning to infection control, sanitising, deodorisation and biohazard cleaning and fogging.
Nathan also went on to gain specialist training in crime and trauma scene cleaning with the National Academy of Crime Scene Cleaning – one of the top courses in the country.
Nathan said: “I’ve been here nearly half my life now and it can be anything from cleaning out really dirty properties one day to attending a suicide the next.
“When we go to work, we don’t judge anybody. If you think you’ve seen it on telly, we can match it.
“When we share the pictures online some people say how can someone live like that? But it’s really more how is someone not able to live like us? It’s about understanding why this has happened to them.”
The duo added that most of the jobs they’re called to are evictions from end of tenancies or homes where tenants leave suddenly and never come back.
Mike added: “There’s never two jobs alike. You never know what the next call is going to be. It can be an emergency call out to clean up blood to a full property hoarder clearance or a sudden death.
“We never know what call we’re going to get each day and when we finish for the weekend, come Monday It’s time to start all over again.”
Some particularly horrendous properties can take up to a week to be fully cleaned and made spotless while most take the duo only two days to fix up.
The pair also have to wear full hazmat suits, safety boots, respirators and needle-proof gloves to tackle the clean-ups, which Mike said stands as a testament to the level of training required to take on the job.
He added: “It is not a job that an ordinary cleaner could or should do. It takes that specialist training to be able to do it all safely.
“Just putting your hand in the wrong spot could get you jabbed by a dirty needle. We’re specifically trained to look for needles and where they would be hidden, it only takes one needle jab, and the chances are you’re going to get something like hepatitis.
“Some jobs might not even look dirty, and it’s the unseen dangers like airborne pathogens, bacteria and virus’ that you have to be aware of all the time.”
Nathan added that in addition to the health hazards, a lot of the properties can be structurally unsound with sinking floors or caving in roofs.
He said: “You can easily fall through a floor if you’re not careful and because we often clean places where drug use takes place, we occasionally get some people turn back up and ask to enter the property while we’re cleaning.
“We have to refuse them because often they’ve been evicted and it’s unsafe for them to enter, some of them will try and push their way back in but they don’t get very far.”
Nathan also said that it takes an incredibly strong stomach to take on the job with odours so bad they can’t be blocked with masks.
Everything from rotten food to built-up cat or dog urine or a body left for weeks is enough to make the eyes water and cause squeamish people to gag.
He added: “We’ve been to a property where someone had passed and had been there for weeks and that is a really powerful smell.
“But we just get in and break down the job, we start with the stench and go onto sharps and needles and once it’s safe enough to work without fear we crack on and start removing rubbish and dirt.”
Nathan explained that extreme cleaning can be so tough that it has been proven to trigger PTSD and that while training is crucial, it’s experience that makes or breaks an extreme cleaner.
He said: “You’ve got to be able to put a mental block up. It can be really hard going in and seeing the home someone has died in and having to clean up 70-odd years of a life.
“You cannot practise this job it’s really not something you can just decide to do. The chances of us two being able to do it on do it on the same path is unusual.
“I don’t know if it’s just down to personality or we’re just able to switch off and do it, but it just works for us.
“We’re both hands on, we get stuck in, get the job done and move on to the next one. You cannot go into it blind to what we face; you’ve got to be ready for absolutely everything.”
Some of the most terrifying properties the duo has faced include drug dens covered in booby traps.
Nathan said: “Some drug users will tie 15 to 20 needles together and they’ll attach them to a piece of string so when you open a door they come swinging out and stab you in the face.
“It’s specifically for the landlords or bailiffs or police, but most of the time we’re in there before them so it’s us that face it and we’re trained in ways to open doors and look for these things.”
He added that needles are often hidden under bannisters on staircases and even in harder to spot places like light switches.
Nathan said: “We have to stay one step ahead all the time – but that’s why we love it.
“I did my training, and it just grew from there, 10 months passed and then 10 years had passed. It all comes natural to me now, it’s just second nature.
“Some of the cleans we do are actually working with social services to get people out to get to the hospital and then make it safe for them to come home.
“That gives us a lot of satisfaction to give them a safe environment to live in, it feels really good.
“Working nine to five or six in full hazmat gear makes you sweat buckets and at the end of the week and you’ve locked the last door behind you, you can’t help but feel satisfied.
“People often ask me if I like my job and for me now it’s less of a job and more of a living. Mentally I take it all home with me, we see some sights that would shock a person to their core and it’s part of my life now.”
Mike added that at the end of a clean, there’s a lot of paperwork involved in where the rubbish, biohazard materials and needles go next.
He said: “Everything we clean-up has to be disposed of correctly, you can’t just throw it in the bin, it has to be bagged and tagged and then taken to the proper people to be incinerated and records are kept.
“We can track a piece of bloody tissue from three years ago – it’s not just as simple as cleaning up a bit of blood. The waste even has to be stored in special buildings before it’s taken away.”
In addition to the crime scenes and grimy homes, the duo is also tasked with cleaning chemical spills, pressure washing and spent the entirety of the COVID-19 lockdown sanitising community centres and vaccination and testing sites.
Mike said: “COVID was absolutely non-stop. When Britain came to a standstill we were flying around.
“We did a lot of sanitising it was a long couple of years. People around us were catching it left and right and we were knee deep in the middle of it all and it was an unnerving time.
“Touch wood – I haven’t had COVID yet, but our infection control training definitely helped with all that.”
