May 5-11, 2005

naked city

The Short Goodbye, with Ceiling Fan

masked man: Ben Poles, Kenneth Poles' uncle and part of the Po-Well squad, dons the tools of the trade, including the fog mask pictured above. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

For the Po-Well Trauma Cleaning Squad, summer spells an uptick in bloody crime-scene cleanups.

by Trish Boppert

Suicides who make their final exit via gunshot are almost always men. They usually pick the bedroom for their short goodbye, and more often than not it's equipped with a ceiling fan, says Kenneth Poles, 32, who should know, having cleaned up the blood, body fluids and gore left behind by 60-some suicides. Those fans almost always seem to be whirring when the shot is fired, splattering blood and tissue and making an already difficult job just a tad harder, explains Poles, who founded Delaware County's Po-Well Trauma Cleaning Squad, Inc. (specializing in crime- and trauma-scene cleanup) in 2000.

"It's almost like they make a point to turn on the fan before picking up the gun, and it's strange how many of them do it," says Poles, who adds that the second-most popular form of suicide is slitting one's wrists in the bathtub — which requires him to use a specially fitted Shop-Vac to remove the inches-deep pool of blood and body fluids. In Poles' experience, suicide is typically a suburban thing, but regardless of where it occurs, the aftermath is sobering.

"The body is gone when we get there, but not the sadness," says Poles. "You can sense the despair they were feeling."

"Like suicides, decomposed bodies are also more a rural and suburban thing," he says. "Weeks might go by before someone notices that the mail has piled up, or the person hasn't been seen in a while. In most parts of the city, everyone lives close enough so that the smell would tip people off a lot sooner."

The presence of flies, and lots of them, says Poles, is always a sign of advanced decomposition. In cases like these, body fluids seep through mattresses, rugs and even floor tiles. All must be removed and disposed of according to federal, state and local regulations.

With summer looming, Poles is gearing up for an onslaught of heat-related and other natural deaths, all of which, depending on the temperature, involve some degree of decomposition. He and his crew handled upwards of 25 corpses during last year's hot-weather months. On the bright side, Poles says violent crimes occur more frequently outdoors during summer months, which can limit the level of cleanup involved.

Poles' profession tends to inspire a mixture of squeamishness and morbid interest, especially when he explains what got him started.

"My wife and I were watching the TV coverage of the Columbine High School shootings, and she wondered aloud who would clean up the blood, and it got me thinking," says Poles. A machine operator at the former Nabisco (now Kraft) plant in Northeast Philadelphia, where periods of employment are often interrupted by production-related layoffs, Poles was no stranger to work slowdowns. The more he learned about trauma cleaning, the more intrigued he became. After investigating the costs of training, specialized equipment and advertising his services to funeral directors, medical examiners, law enforcement agencies and other people who might give him referrals, Poles decided that trauma cleaning offered the flexibility he was seeking. On Valentine's Day, 2000, Po-Well (a melding of Poles' and wife Shlea Barnswell Poles' names) Trauma Cleaning Squad, Inc. was born. With a current staff of nine employees, Po-Well provides a range of specialized services to clients including retail chains, manufacturing sites, and individuals. The company receives about four to five calls a week during the summer, up from two or three calls per week the rest of the year. Industrial and manufacturing jobs primarily involve cleaning up after assembly line and machine shop mishaps. Workers lose fingers, hands and limbs far more often than you'd think, says Poles, who now shudders when he sees someone attempting to un-jam a garbage disposal. Depending on where industrial accidents occur, adjacent assembly lines might be manned and running while his crew scrapes human tissue from machine parts and swabs blood off the walls.

Crime scenes can be especially devastating, says Poles, especially when children are involved. In breaking news cases, media crews often wait outside police barricades to pepper him or his employees with questions about the scene.

"What tends to be forgotten is that the deceased or injured person has a family who loves them and who may not even know that they're gone yet. They shouldn't have to hear the details on TV," he laments.

Poles has handled his share of unusual cases, including that of a man who died in an apartment that also housed several lizards in floor-to-ceiling cages. Somehow the scaly pets escaped before their owner's body was found. "They nibbled on him a little bit," recalls Poles, whose knack for understatement comes with the territory. When he and his crew arrived, the body and lizards had been removed, but the apartment was still stifling. Seems the man kept the heat blasting for the sake of his lizards, who had a peculiar way of thanking him.

Though it can provide a good income (the cost of cleaning a bathroom suicide usually starts at around $1,500), trauma cleaning is not for the faint of heart. The risk of HIV and hepatitis A and C infection is high. The work is emotionally draining. Ongoing education and extensive documentation are part of the job. But more than anything else, Poles says, his work requires equal parts compassion and common sense.

"Imagine that someone you love committed suicide or was injured in your home," he says. "Our job is to respect your loss, respect the dignity of the person who was killed or injured, and do our job so you don't have to. It's a service you hope you never have to use, but when you do, you want to be treated with the utmost respect and dignity."