Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Bellaire, OH

Bellaire is a village in Belmont County, Ohio, along the Ohio River in the Wheeling, West Virginia metropolitan area, and its motto is "Working Toward A Better Tomorrow."

Bellaire was founded in 1834 when John Rodefer and Jacob Davis surveyed building lots and named the town Bell Air after Davis's former home in Maryland; the railroad company later respelled the name Bellaire, and the village was incorporated in 1860.

Bellaire's growth took off with the Central Ohio Railroad in 1853 and the B&O Stone Viaduct Bridge over the Ohio River, opened in 1871 and now a registered historic structure.

During the Civil War, Bellaire's position on the Ohio River border between Union Ohio and seceded Virginia made it strategically important, and Camp Jefferson was established there as a Union military training camp.

Bellaire earned the title "Glass City" between 1870 and 1885, when works such as Belmont Glass, the Bellaire Window Glass Company and the Rodefer-Gleason Glass Company produced glass fueled by local Belmont County coal.

The Imperial Glass Company, founded in Bellaire in 1901 by Edward Muhleman, made its first glass in 1904, became one of America's largest handmade glass manufacturers with its trademark Candlewick pattern, and closed in 1984; the Imperial Glass Museum now preserves its story.

The Rodefer-Gleason Glass Company operated on the same Bellaire site at 22nd and Union Streets longer than any other glass company in the history of the United States, according to a local history of the village.

Bellaire appears in two Hollywood films - the now-abandoned Bellaire Bridge was filmed in the 1991 movie The Silence of the Lambs, and the curved B&O Railroad Viaduct was featured in the 2010 film Unstoppable.

Bellaire's population peaked at 15,061 in the 1920 census during its industrial heyday, but by the 2020 census it had fallen to 3,870 residents.

The 2020 census counted 1,714 households in Bellaire, and about 37% of them were people living alone.