A 60-year-old man was found dead in his apartment in Waalre on Tuesday evening. Neighbors raised the alarm, because there was a pungent smell in the complex for days. What happens after someone is found dead in a home? From the police to the cleaners: we explain it to you.
The police are the first to make sure that an investigation is carried out. “This consists of two parts: examination of the body and examination of the environment of the deceased,” the police explained. A forensic doctor examines the body and forensic investigators examine the area. Both try to discover what caused the person to die.
When the investigation is completed, a funeral transport company comes to remove the body and take it to a morgue. Unless there may be a crime. “Then the investigation will turn into a criminal investigation”, the police said. The Netherlands Forensic Institute will then examine the body.
Once the body has been removed, the house must be cleaned. The company Post Mortem Facilities specializes in this and cleans places throughout the country where people have died, including in Brabant. “We are available 24/7 and must act appropriately,” says Hans Sinke. He is the coordinator of the company and explains how it works.
“It also happens that moisture has soaked into floor concrete.”
“The place is completely cleaned of dirt, corpse fluid, body fluids and everything that comes with decomposition. If someone has been there for weeks, there may also be maggots or flies that we have to remove,” says Sinke.
First, the surface on which someone has been lying must be removed. That can be a bed or sofa, but also something else. “If it was on the floor, we remove the piece of carpet or laminate. It also sometimes happens that moisture has soaked into the floor concrete. You don’t have to smell that: you see a stain. We remove that piece of concrete from the floor. ground and later it will be applied again.”
Then it is up to the cleaners to disinfect everything and to remove the smell. “There is often an unpleasant smell. We neutralize it,” Sinke explains. They do this by ventilating the house. “We open everything so that the air can circulate. We spray everything with special stuff.”
“Stink nuisance must always be cleaned up quickly.”
If it took a long time before a deceased person was found, then according to Sinke it is a bit more difficult. “If someone has been somewhere for ten weeks, the smell has had time for ten weeks to penetrate everywhere: from the walls to the wardrobe. You can’t get that smell from furniture. A house is then only one hundred percent odor-free if a house clearer has been and it is completely empty.”
The question then remains: who is responsible for these costs? According to Sinke, that varies from time to time. “We are called in by the police, relatives or the municipality,” he explains. “In principle, it is paid from the resources of the person who has died, for example through a will. If there is none, the next of kin have to pay.”
In some cases, the municipality pays. “Sometimes the relatives are not yet in the picture, but the odor nuisance must always be cleaned up quickly. The municipality then advances the money and reclaims it itself from the person responsible. These can be relatives or the owner of a rental property.” In any case, the cleaning company’s job is done. What happens next to a house is up to the next of kin.
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