Santa Maria, California
Biohazard cleanup and crime scene cleanup in Santa Maria
A death, a violent crime or a bad injury can leave blood and other remains that household cleaning will not make safe, and that nobody close to the person should have to face. This number puts you through to an independent bio hazard cleanup company working in Santa Maria, California and the towns around it. They tell you what the job involves. Hiring them is up to you.
Phone answered all day and all night, seven days a week
- For houses, rentals, shops, offices and vehicles
- The company you reach is separate from this website
- Nothing is booked until you agree to it
Situations
Which of these is closest to what happened?
Each page says what the cleanup covers, which office is involved first and what to ask on the phone. If nothing fits, call and describe it.
- Crime scene cleanupFor the days after detectives give a house, a shop or a car back to whoever owns it.
- Unattended death cleanupA house or apartment where a person lay undiscovered, be it two days or two months.
- Suicide cleanupQuiet work, booked by phone, that puts the room right without relatives setting foot in it.
- Blood and bodily fluid cleanupKitchen cuts, bathroom falls, injuries on a shop floor: bleeding that got into carpet, bedding or seats.
- Hoarding cleanupRooms piled high, where droppings, rot or a broken toilet make sorting through them unsafe.
- Infectious disease disinfectionTreating a home or office after norovirus, C. diff or a similar bug, using a product registered for it.
- Vehicle cleanupUpholstery, carpet and trim in a car or truck, including one just collected from the impound lot.
The work itself
What a biohazard cleanup company does that a cleaning service does not
The job has three parts. First, whatever has soaked through is taken out: carpet and pad, a mattress, sometimes a section of subfloor or drywall. Second, the surfaces that stay are cleaned and then disinfected. Third, everything removed is sealed in containers and taken to a facility permitted to treat it.
That third part is why this is regulated work in California. A business that removes blood and body fluids after a serious injury or a death has to be registered with the state health department, and the waste has to end up at a permitted medical waste facility. The department keeps the list of registered firms, and our guide to California's rules for cleanup companies shows how to use it.
People search for this under many names: crime scene cleanup, trauma cleanup, biohazard removal, blood cleanup. They all describe the same trade.
Local offices
Who you may hear from, and who you can ring
Numbers for the public offices that are usually part of this in the Santa Maria area.
Santa Maria Police
For anything that is not an emergency, including when a scene inside the city will be released, the police business line is (805) 928-3781. For an emergency, 911.
Sheriff-Coroner
Santa Barbara County's Coroner’s Bureau looks into deaths anywhere in the county, whichever police agency responded. Its office answers at (805) 681-4145 on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Victim-Witness Assistance
After a crime, advocates at the District Attorney's Santa Maria office on East Cook Street help with the state compensation application: (805) 346-7529.
Cost
Who pays for it
The person responsible for the property hires the company and gets the bill. After a crime in a home or a vehicle, the California Victim Compensation Board can repay cleanup costs, but only when the work was done by a company on the state's registered list. Home, renters and auto policies sometimes respond too. What a policy covers is between you and your insurer.
Our guide Who pays for biohazard cleanup? goes through each route and explains what makes one job cost more than another.
Area
Santa Maria, Orcutt and the towns close by
Cleanup companies reached through this number work in Santa Maria and Orcutt and can often go to Guadalupe, Nipomo and Grover Beach. The service area page has the details.
OrcuttUnincorporated, so Sheriff's deputies from the Foster Road station respond here.
GuadalupeA separate city. Deaths are looked into by the same Sheriff-Coroner as in Santa Maria.
NipomoThe next town north, in a different county with a different coroner's office.
Grover BeachA city with its own police dispatch, inside San Luis Obispo County's coroner system.The call
What happens when you ring
You say where and what
A town and one or two sentences are enough. Nobody needs the whole story.
A cleanup company comes on
It is an independent business that works in this part of the Central Coast. Ask your questions.
They look at the job
Often in person. Ask for the scope and the price in writing before any work begins.
You choose
Say yes, say no, or say you need a day. More on how this service works.
Short answers
Questions people ask first
Who cleans up after a crime or a death in a home?
Not the police and not the coroner. Once they release the scene, cleanup is arranged by the owner, the tenant or the family, and in California the firm doing it has to be a registered trauma scene waste management practitioner.
Is this website a cleanup company?
No. It is a referral service. The number here leads to an independent company that does the work under its own name and gives you its own price.
Can I call in the middle of the night?
Yes. Somebody picks up at three in the morning the same as at three in the afternoon, weekends included.
Do I have to hire the company I speak with?
No. You can listen, ask what they would do, and decide later or not at all.
Whenever suits you
Hand the room to people whose trade this is
Two sentences about the situation are plenty. You then hear how the firm would tackle it and what it would bill. Yes or no is yours alone to say, today or next week.
The number for Santa Maria and the valley
Whoever picks up belongs to a cleanup firm that takes jobs from Guadalupe up to Grover Beach. It is a separate business from this website. Name your town, say what sort of place it is, and ask anything.
Call (805) 362-1926Phone answered all day and all night, seven days a week
The call may be recorded. How this works is set out in the referral disclosure.