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Today's Featured Biography

Mark Fagala

In 1988 Mark Fagala started his career in the crisis management business as team member with Gaston Lifesaving Crew and Union Road Fire Department. When disasters happened or the weather turned bad Fagala and his squad went to search and rescue victims in the worst of circumstances.

Over the years as he grew and learned some difficult lessons Mark Fagala received public, media and personal recognition and awards from agencies from all over the Carolinas.

From those days to now, Fagala is still in the business of helping people and organizations save time, money and grief by using his 2+ decades of experience.

After helping several thousands of victims of fire, floods, hurricanes, car wrecks, death and just stupid human errors, Fagala provides insight and wisdom which is truly valuable and unique. He still focuses his skills to provide ordinary people with simple tools to avoid all sorts of stress.

This story about Mark Fagala below is from a NBC news special done by WCNC out of Charlotte.

It's not a job for those with a weak stomach. Just as crime scene detectives wrap up evidence collection, a crime scene cleaner’s job begins. WCNC spent time with a local crime scene cleaner who told us what it’s like to clean up some of the messiest and most gruesome headlines.

When the call comes into 9-1-1, police, fire and medics race to the scene whether it's murder, stabbing, a construction accident, or any other tragedy or trauma. And not far behind them is Gastonia man Mark Fagala. His job is to clean it all up. The emergencies he responds to often make headlines like a mall shooting where two people were injured. Mark cleaned up a deadly construction accident in Belmont where a worker was crushed to death. And in Rock Hill, after a worker fell from atop a Winthrop University building under construction, Mark arrived with in a half hour to begin cleaning it up.

"We used special chemicals and enzymes," he explains as she shows us the elaborate suits they wear to clean. "We have full face respirators that we use. There's not a part of our body that isn't covered, so we are covered from head to toe when we go in.”

When death calls, Fagala isn’t far behind. "We respond to homicide, suicide, accidental death, decompositions."

His job is to clean up messes most of us don't like to think about. "What CSI shows don't tell you and show, is that when they are done, we have to actually go in and clean up.”

It is sometimes difficult to explain to people exactly what he does for a living, especially when the question comes up in casual conversation.

"I do get funny reactions,” Fagala said with a smile. “Some people just can't fathom, can't comprehend, why I would go in and do something like this."

But whether it’s crime, trauma, or biohazards, Fagala says scrubbing away what remains of those events and bringing some kind of peace and order to those who survive them, is what drives him to do it day in and day out.

"I didn't stumble into this…I really feel like we were called to do this to help people in their greatest time of need," he said. He added that in some cases, where people don’t have the insurance or enough money to pay him, he’ll clean for free. He says the idea of leaving people with a mess on their hands is something he has a hard time with.

Fagala doesn't deny the horror like the kind found at the 2003 quadruple homicide in Belmont, NC. "That was kind of scary," he remembers. "It turned out to be a pretty big scene as far as contamination."

He also assisted at the crash site of Flight 5841 at Charlotte Douglas Airport in 2003.

“That was really overwhelming,” he said. But Fagala says he has to leave his emotions at home because someone has to return things back to normal. "It's hard for fire and police to leave that family, you know, ‘here, we are going to take your loved one and leave you with a mess.’”

And then there are the messes that aren’t particularly tragic but just gross. "There are some mills around here that get bad pigeons," Fagala explains. "I went to a local mill that had a coup up in there roof and in their ceiling for probably 15 years and there was probably six inches of waste up there that we had to crawl up there and deal with."

Whether horrific or outrageous, it comes down to this: at the end of the day or at the end of shift,"By the time we leave, everything is cleaned and sanitized. The satisfaction of something like that outweighs a paycheck." That's what leaves him ready for the next call.

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