If you’re looking into homeless encampment cleanup in Industry, California, you’ve no doubt noticed a rise in these types of homeless “cities” in the past few years. For any number of reasons including joblessness, mental illness, and mere bad luck, people make their way to these makeshift communities where many of them find safety in numbers.
Homeless encampments have become a huge issue in the past few years due to the sheer number of them and their often unwieldy size. Even if a county or city removes the homeless encampment, the space still has to be cleaned before it’s safe for use. That’s where we come in.
As part of homeless encampment cleaning, we clear out, clean, and disinfect homeless encampment spaces. The goal is to make the area safe for full community use once again.
What Is a Homeless Encampment?
A homeless encampment is usually referred to as a space where at least two or more homeless people live on property that doesn’t belong to them. The properties can be located anywhere, including bustling industrial areas or quiet residential spots. In addition to many of these encampments being unsightly due to the sheer amount of garbage and waste that’s in full view, many of them are also completely unsanitary, raising the likelihood of the spread of disease.
Why Do Homeless Encampments Pose a Health Risk?
Homeless encampments pose health risks because they hold a lot of biohazardous waste. Biohazardous waste is the type of waste that’s filled with pathogens like viruses and bacteria that cause diseases in humans. Homeless encampment sites are usually crowded spaces with people living very close to each other. Since diseases spread through biohazardous waste really easily, one sick person can quickly turn into a hundred sick people in the blink of an eye. Once someone is sick and they’re walking around in the encampment, it’s very easy for them to infect everyone else in the community.
What Are Some Examples of Biohazardous Waste?
Biohazardous waste comes in many different forms. At homeless encampment sites, this waste usually includes blood, garbage, rotting food, human waste, animal waste, and any other vehicle that provides a host for pathogens to spread quickly and easily.
The reason that this type of waste is so prevalent in homeless encampments is because there are no bathroom facilities, sanitary cooking facilities, or refrigerators to store food at the site. Food rots, people use the bathroom wherever they are, and they don’t pick up after their animals. Before long, you’ve got several different ways that disease can spread. Many homeless encampments have seen outbreaks of diseases like Hepatitis A. With many homeless residents not receiving medical care of any sort, the likelihood of these diseases spreading is extremely high.
What’s the Process for Homeless Encampment Cleanup?
Homeless encampment cleanup requires several different steps.
The first part of the process will include breaking down the individual shelters that have been built. These come in the form of items like boxes, blankets, and any other material he may be used to create a makeshift shelter.
Next we go through the camp and make sure that every single bit of drug paraphernalia has been removed. With items including syringes and needles, drug paraphernalia is an extremely dangerous type of biohazardous waste, and it requires careful removal, storage, transport, and destruction.
We will remove all of the biohazardous material from the site. Each type of biohazardous material will have its own special type of trash bag. The bags are OSHA and EPA-approved and sealed tight to prevent the waste from coming into contact with other surfaces.
The last part of the process will include the wash down, decontamination, and disinfection of the area. This step is absolutely critical because it will allow the area to be safe for people to move around in once again.
How Are Cleaners Protected?
Our cleaning specialists wear PPE gear that will help protect them from the substances that they come into contact with while cleaning the sites. The gear they wear includes head-to-toe body suits, face shields, shoe covers, respirators, face masks, and everything else to help ensure that they won’t be at risk for contamination. They also wear special gloves that are puncture and cut-resistant so that their fingers are protected when they’re picking up drug paraphernalia.
As you can see, clearing up a homeless encampment is serious business. You want to get the area clean and safe for use again, but you also have to make sure that the people cleaning the site are protected.
Our cleaners are highly trained in removing all of the biohazardous waste and trash that exists at homeless encampment sites. We know how to clean these sites so that you can safely use the space again. Give us a call at any time if you have any questions about what the process will entail for you.