SafeScene Forensic Cleaning: Rosetown duo makes national waves in trauma cleanup
BY IAN MACKAY
People with a relatively new Rosetown business have been nominated for an award.
Colette Thompson and Amanda Anderson started SafeScene Forensic Cleaning Ltd. last January to fill a void they saw in rural Saskatchewan—cleaning up after calamities.
Colette Thompson (L) and Amanda Anderson started a new business early this year remediating crime and death scenes so police or family members don’t have to. Photo by Ian MacKay
“We’re the only company that solely assists families in traumatic cleanup,” Thompson said in a recent interview.
“It’s really not anybody’s job description if something terrible happens, whatever that is,” Anderson said. “Not the funeral home, not the police, not the fire department, not the coroner.”
“Families are left to take care of this on their own, which is another traumatic event, after something traumatic has happened,” Thompson said as they finished each other’s sentences in an office at Shanidar Funeral Services, where they work together.
They’ll clear up crime scenes or after somebody is found deceased and their body is decomposing. They’ll also step into an illegal drug lab—which they haven’t done yet—and dispose of its contents safely, or deal with a hoarder’s belongings, returning the home to “a safe and livable environment,” according to the SafeScene brochure.
They’ve worked at “multiple traumatic events,” Anderson said later, mainly “traumatic scenes, which can include unattended death and decomposition cleanup, and trauma scene cleanup—anything where there’d be biological matter to clean up,” usually involving humans, she said.
Other remediation firms exist in the major cities but don’t specialize in what they focus on, they said. “Often, their wait times are weeks, which is very difficult when you’re living in your home,” Thompson said.
After they recognized “the unmet need,” they decided they were comfortable helping families in such cases because of their work in the funeral profession, Thompson said.
“We knew that we are capable of doing it and we know a lot of people aren’t, so, with our ability to do this and to handle it, and having the training that we do, being funeral directors and embalmers, it seemed like a natural progression,” she said. “It was a perfect fit for us.”
“Our combined experience is over 25 years in the funeral profession, so we’ve really seen and done most things” mentioned in their brochure, Anderson said. “But it’s always shocking to me that there are things that we haven’t seen,” she said.
“We can still be surprised,” Thompson agreed.
The company has been nominated in the remediation category for a 2026 Canadian Choice Award—“a huge honour,” Thompson said, adding that they don’t know who nominated them.
“We kind of think of ourselves as being invisible”—in this endeavour and while working in the background at funerals, Thompson said. “So for someone to recognize us already, within our first year of being in business, we’re pretty excited about it. It feels pretty good.”
“It’s a natural progression for us,” Anderson said. “We’re really excited about where the future will lead us. It’s really endless in terms of growth all over Saskatchewan, specifically rural Saskatchewan. Nothing like this company exists provincially, where our sole focus is traumatic events cleanup and remediation.”