A hazardous material cleaner removes a wrapped item

africatodayonline.blogspot.com -

Rick Jervis, USA TODAY 8:17 p.m. EDT October 14, 2014

A hazardous material cleaner removes a wrapped item from the apartment where Thomas Eric Duncan, the Ebola patient who traveled from Liberia to Dallas, stayed.(Photo: LM Otero, AP)

DALLAS — Containing the Ebola virus in a major U.S. city requires more than just a trained hospital staff and good equipment.

It takes a long list of people and companies, from clean-up firms willing to haul away Ebola-infected waste to landlords ready to house potential carriers of the virus to social workers who could ease the stress of an outbreak, from many corners of a community.

"Literally hundreds of people somehow touched this to make it happen," Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said. "Every time you turn around, you find another expert you need. It literally is a village making this process happen."

When news of the first confirmed case of Ebola in the USA was announced Sept. 30, state, local and federal officials in Dallas scrambled to decontaminate everything around town where the patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, had been after he arrived from Liberia.

EBOLA CRISIS: Cases could dramatically increase

At first, it wasn't easy. Officials called a number of companies about decontaminating the apartment where Duncan had stayed with his fiancée, Louise Troh, and three other family members. One after another, the companies declined.

The call finally went to the Cleaning Guys, a Fort Worth-based hazardous-waste cleanup firm. The company, which usually deals with highway spills and hospital cleanups, took the job.

"It was a real eye-opener," owner Erick McCallum said. "We train for things like this, but then it hits home. We realized, 'We're not dreaming. This is really happening.'"

Over 24 hours, more than 15 workers in hazmat suits stripped the northeast Dallas apartment where Duncan and Troh stayed, tearing up carpets, mattresses, furniture, "everything not bolted down," McCallum said. Workers triple-bagged the items and crammed them into 140 55-gallon drums.

The drums needed to be driven to an incinerator 400 miles away, where they would be destroyed. But getting the appropriate permits from the Department of Transportation took a few days, because the agency needed to draw up permits specifically for Ebola transport, McCallum said.

EBOLA RESPONSE: Mark Zuckerberg gives $25M to fight Ebola

"There was no DoT permitting out there because this had never happened before in this country," he said. The department created temporary permits, and the barrels were shipped out.

Meanwhile, county officials needed to find a house where Duncan's relatives could stay while being monitored for the disease – but no one would take them. After numerous phone calls, including one to a local clergy leader, emergency officials found a house where the family could live, said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, who is heading the response.

Delays in permitting, cleaning a home and moving relatives could all be avoided by having all the companies and agencies lined up ahead of time, he said.

Autoplay

Show Thumbnails

Show Captions

Last Slide Next Slide

"You need to have contracts ready to be signed, parties agreed, backups to those parties," Jenkins said. "Everything you've seen happen in this response can happen again. Every time we deal with these things, we should do them better."

Another unforeseen hurdle was how best to deal with the friends, family members and medical personnel – known as "contacts" – who had some interaction with the Ebola patient. Staffers with the Centers for Disease Control and Protection in Dallas, as well as hospital personnel, initially monitored 48 contacts, including Duncan's close family, for signs of the virus.

But even contacts considered "low risk" were being stigmatized by their neighbors and pursued by the media, said Charnetta Smith, a CDC staffer in Dallas. In future outbreaks, social workers should be on call to help those people, especially with stress, she said.

"To become a contact is an emotionally draining situation for a family," Smith said. "Their lives have been changed as well."

After hauling away nearly 200 55-gallon drums filled with Ebola-tainted material from the apartment and the hospital, McCallum at the Cleaning Guys said his team has learned to safely navigate the treacherous field of Ebola cleanup.

His parting advice to other companies: "Training, training, training," McCallum said. "It's not just about throwing someone in a bunny suit and putting them out there. You have to be able to do it in your sleep."