Australia's Science Forum

Hi Everyone,
Hope you all had a good holiday.
I came back to an unpleasant surprise. During the holidays we had people in doing the compulsory electrical testing. When I arrived Monday morning I opened the door of one of our blocks to the overwhelming smell of something well and truly dead.
They had forgotten to switch one of the fridges back on and of course it was the one that had all the hearts, kidneys etc in the freezer.
What a pleasant way to start the day!
We had to wheel the fridge outside, leaving a trail of stinking blood as we went. The head teacher of course disappeared at the first smell of it and everyone else just kept saying how disgusting it was so guess who got the job of disposing of all the rotten stuff?
I thought I would leave the door open for a while to try and disperse the smell before I attacked it and when I came back 10 mins later the whole freezer was black with flies.
Got to wonder why I come to work some days.
Helen

Hi Helen,
One of my end of term jobs is to dispose of all our dissection meat which we keep frozen until the freezer drawer is full. Fortunately, the abattoir we deal with are happy so far to take back the meat for recycling. (into blood and bone meal I guess.)
I can sympathasise with your dilemma......
~Robyn

Yes that happened to me one holidays, only we had a huge storm and the power tripped out at the power board. I can sympathise about the smell!! In the end we had to get a new freezer, just could not get the smell out, luckily we were able to claim this on insurance. Good luck with the cleaning!

Hi

We also had the electrical checks done over the holidays. I came back to a storeroom with equipment taken off shelves and electrical cords hanging from equipment and off course equipment left over the floor, so that was something else to do first day back. I guess I'm lucky, I didn't have any horrible messes to clean up.

Vicki

Try to beat this one. A science teacher was retrenched at the end of a year, so to get back at the HD he put one frozen rat in the back of a chest of draws( not in the draw) before the xmas holidays. Can you imagine the smell when we all came back and it still took a week to find it. Lada

Hi Helen

It happened to me a few years ago. The cleaner switched the freezer off over the school hols. It was full of hearts and rats!

It takes ages to get rid of the smell. I used Nil Odour, vanilla escence and lemon juice on a daily basis. I also left the open freezer in the sun to air out, approx 1 week. If you can get a new freezer on insurance - go for it!

Good luck

Alice

Sounds like smelly fridges are a part of the job!
Luckily they are giving us a new fridge so I don't have to worry any more about getting rid of the smell.
Lada that must have been so disgusting! At least we could move the fridge outside and get the smell away. Not being able to find what was making the smell would be horrible.
That teacher must have been really angry with the Head teacher.
Helen

Happened to me. We had a whole ox liver in the freezer section of an upside down fridge/freezer. Apart from cleaning up a stinking maggot-ridden mess, there was the added bonus of little cherubs telling me "Gosh that stinks! Shut the door!" every time I walked from the prep room into a classroom. Well, der! Who did they think was working in the stinky prep room?

Potassium permanganate helps get the smell out of rooms etc. I made a solution in an ice-cream bucket and had it under my fridge, which is now up on blocks, just in case it ever happens again!!!

Cheers, K

Hi everyone,
Seems like lots of us have had to deal with a freezer full of rotting, putrid-smelling flesh, myself included.
Check out the following website Cheltie: http://www.electronichealing.co.uk/prod ... buster.htm
it may be a bit late to help with your current problem, but it may be worth having something on hand 'just in case of'.
I have a stainless steel bar of 'soap' in my kitchen at home and use it whenever I prepare onions, prawns, or other smelly foods and it really works! The above site seems to have various stainless steel products for just about any smelly situation. Don't know if there is an Australian supplier. If anyone knows, perhaps they can post it on this site.

Regards
Fran

Same thing happened to me when I was filling in at another school. Thankfully, the bloody specimens were stowed in trays, so the freezer wasn't contaminated. I don't have a chest-freezer here and don't want one; too many things can and do go awry. We go out of the way collecting all the bits & pieces, why add insult by having to throw it all out and wipe up stinky blood? I have developed a dissection prac order form, and anything not used on the day is thrown out.

Love that Smell Buster idea, Fran - could we get one for every classroom, do you think?

I was showing some Business Studies students around this morning, and they were complaining about the chemical smell I 'live with' - but then, walking back along the corridor, we all decided the people fumes coming from one of the Labs was even worse (junior boys)!

We had the "Rat Freezer" go off one holidays because of a lightning strike. We came back to the smell on the first day back. Fortunately we had a "Maintenance Man" who could be delegated the job. Unfortunately, at the time, I WAS the Maintenance man!!!!!. Some how, I doubt that the current Maintenance crew would do it any more, so next time, I guess it will be me again.

One holidays the electrical lead testers left the freezers in the school canteen turned off. We lost thousands of dollars worth of frozen food goods. Our property manager insisted that the electricians clean out the freezers them selves and then claim the spoilage on THEIR insurance!! They seem to be a lot more careful these days.

Although I could empathise with them, somehow I did not have much sympathy!

regards
Ian

I had a fridge containing rats and toads turned off at the powerpoint by an unthinking teacher. They had been using some piece of equipment in the lab in my absence and flicked off the wrong switch, cutting power to the fridge. This happened on a Friday - as I only work here on Tuesdays and Thursdays by the time I discovered it after a hot weekend it was more than ripe!

Go with Ian's solution - make the culprits do the clean-up. You can bet they won't do it again. Sadly for me, in my case, it was the ruling HNIC (Head Nun In Charge) so I wasn't able to make that suggestion.

Cheers, K

If only I knew which teacher it was........no one owned up to it!

And they think they are better than students!!!!!!

One thing I find too interesting about teaching staff is their inability to admit a mistake or say sorry. Of course I am generalising, but those habits are highly pronounced throughout their profession.

As the sticker used to say many years ago, "Just ask me, I am a teacher". The inference being that a teacher knows everything.

Maree