Everyone thinks the police take care of this job, but the responsibility often falls back on the people going through tragedy: Megan's job is to help

Most people assume that after a death or incident, the police will take care of any cleanup.

But Megan Warr tells nine.com.au that that is the number one misconception about her job.

Warr has worked as a forensic cleaner for the past seven years, owning her own business, Valley to Beach Forensic Cleaning, for the past five years.

Her job requires her to walk into scenes that most would run away from, explaining that her business takes care of the aftermath of events such as unattended deaths, suicides, and attempted suicides.

"Normally, we'll get a phone call. The family is obviously really distressed; they've just found out," Warr explains.

"We only ask them very minimal questions on the phone because it is so overwhelming for them."

Initially, Warr just needs to know what area of the home someone has died in and how long they've been there for.

She leaves the rest of the questions for her first site visit when she can speak with the family face-to-face, because most of the time, they have no idea the extent a forensic clean can go.

"I don't want to bombard them on the first phone call. 'Oh yeah, you're going to lose all your flooring, you might need walls cut out'," she says.

"You don't want to overwhelm them with that."

Many assume that forensic cleaning simply involves mopping up blood, but Warr says that there's a lack of education on the technical elements of decontaminating a home.

She recalls the first ever scene she attended, a woman who had been dead for around seven weeks on uneven slate tiles.

While it didn't look too bad on the surface, blood and bodily fluids had seeped throughout the home, and the house ended up losing its entire kitchen.

"When the body decomposes, it leaks. Your body fluid leaks," Warr explains.

"So you might see it on the floorboards, there are a few dots of blood or a pile of blood, and you lift the floorboards up, and it has spread so far because it travels through the least resistance."

She explains that someone who has been dead a day is a completely different case from someone who has been dead a few weeks, with the latter often requiring a home to lose its window furnishings, floors, and even walls.

"Say it's happened in the bedroom, if it happened in the bedroom and the person had been there for over ten days or an extended period of time, and flies have landed on the person and they've flown to the other side of the house and pooped on the wall, that's vector transmission, so it spreads through the whole home," she says.

"It's not just cleaning, it's more like restoration work."

To become a forensic cleaner, Warr explains that there are lots of certifications and training to go through, and you have to continuously update your training every year as new chemicals and processes are released.

When working, she has to wear a full face respirator, full hazmat suit, gloves, and gumboots to protect from any diseases, bloodborne pathogens, or biohazards in the air.

While her protective equipment protects her from any biohazards, it also prevents her from having to work through the foul smells that often come with the work, but she says the scent usually still manages to seep through by the end of the day.

"Your hair will stink, your clothes under your suit still stink," she says.

"Nothing has penetrated to it to make you sick; it just smells."

It sounds like the kind of situation most would run away from, but Warr explains that she returns every day for the simple reason of getting to help people.

"There's no better feeling than being able to help in the most traumatic time. A lot of these times, these families have to clean up after their loved ones who have passed away," she says.

"So to be able to take that pressure and burden away from the families and just have it fixed is something that I'm really passionate about.

"It just makes it all worth it."

Produced in partnership with CareerOne.