Meet the woman who will clean up Ebola in Washington state

What happens if Ebola hits Washington state? Well, right now there is not a plan in place. But there will be very soon. King County Public Health contacted Theresa Borst, president of Bio Clean Inc., to help come up with statewide protocols and to actually facilitate any clean ups that might need to be done.

“We clean up after suicides and homicides, decomposed bodies, meth lab cleanup, hoarders, industrial accidents, car accidents, trains, planes, automobiles, oil spills, sewage, mold. Everything gross that nobody else wants to do,” says Theresa.

Theresa knows how to clean, and says the current Ebola sanitation method is not the best.

“Right now the CDC is saying bleach and water, and that’s how they took care of it down in Dallas. But right now we’re looking at hydrogen based products and acid based products.”

Not bleach? Theresa says no. “People went in and did the best they knew at the time. But I think that we’re going to find better protocols and better products that should be used.”

If someone is infected with Ebola in our state, Theresa’s crew will be ready to roll within two hours.

“We will take control of the apartment they were in, the vehicle that they’ve been in, the vehicle they’ve been transported in, anything they have come into contact [with.] Then hospitals, waiting rooms, wherever they have been,” she says. “One of the things that I had to prove to the state is that I could be at four to six different places at once.”

The most important part of the cleaning job is wearing intensely protective gear.

“Chemical resistant suit with taped seams, respirators, the chemical resistant boots and gloves. We will be double-suited and triple-gloved. We will have a three chamber (decontamination) station that we will go through to take off our suits, to make sure they’re properly sanitized so there’s no cross contamination,” she says.

After the cleaning crews shimmies out of the suits, they will be packaged in sealed drums, along with every item the patient came into contact with, and picked up by a company that gets rid of medical waste. That company then treats the drums with high heat and steam and dumps them in a lined landfill.

Now, you might be wondering how someone like Theresa gets into this kind of business.

“I was in search and rescue, taking a crime scene awareness class, and the detective showed us pictures of what suicides and homicides looked like. I had my own house cleaning business at the time and I went up to him and I asked him, ‘Who cleans up after this?’ He said, ‘I swear that’s a niche, you should run with that idea.’

“The fact that law enforcement and the medical examiner did not clean up after the scene just really got my wheels turning because the first thing I thought of was, these poor people are being traumatized twice by finding their loved one, and now having to clean up after it. How horrible.”

The movie “Sunshine Cleaning” is based on her and her company, and she was played by actress Amy Adams. But Theresa is too busy to get wrapped up in show business. She works tirelessly, doing jobs that nobody else will do.

“I just got to help a family and there’s just something very special about it, when you can just go in and remove those unpleasant reminders. I’d be there ’til 3 in the morning if that’s what it took. It’s such a feel-good job, to know that if it wasn’t for you, it’d be them. When it’s a child, no parent should have to see that.”

When it comes to Ebola, Theresa feels confident that proper, detailed cleanup is what will save lives and prevent others from being exposed.