trauma cleaner

MaryW commented on the word trauma cleaner

Most people will never turn their minds to the notion of trauma cleaning, but once they realize that it exists—that it obviously has to—they will probably be surprised to learn that the police do not do trauma cleanup. Neither do firefighters or ambulances or other emergency services. This is why Sandra's trauma work is varied and includes crime scenes, floods, and fires. In addition, government housing and mental health agencies, real estate agents, community organizations, executors of deceased estates, and private individuals all call on Sandra to deal with unattended deaths, suicides, or cases of long-term property neglect where homes have, in her words, "fallen into disrepute" due to the occupier's mental illness, aging, or physical disability.

Sarah Krasnostein, The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman's Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2017), ch. 1

On the surface, trauma cleaning as a career may have a darkly attractive quirkiness, but the reality is that it is dirty, disturbing, backbreaking physical labor of transcendentally exhausting proportions.

Id., ch. 8.

January 28, 2019