Meth Lab Homes

On Monday, September 15th and Tuesday, September 16th, 2008, the world’s first global conference on Methamphetamine will take place in the Czech Republic in Prague’s Historic City Hall. The Conference will gather together experts from the USA, China, Australia, Thailand, Russia, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, New Zealand, Indonesia, Poland, Iran, Serbia, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Great Britain and the United Nations in an effort to find ways to better understand the complex problems that nations around the world are facing because of methamphetamine.

‘The largest areas of methamphetamine production are South East Asia, including Myanmar, China and the Philippines, and in North America. Australia and New Zealand continue to produce significant amounts of methamphetamine. It is believed that large-scale production will soon start in areas of Central America and Keep reading →

When detectives from the Bureau of Fire and Arson Investigators from the Florida State Fire Marshal’s Office arrived at a meth lab at Fort Walton beach, they found more than a few Coleman fuel cans and empty Sudafed packets. They found an escape plan that would allow the meth cooks to detonate more than two dozen pipe bombs that protected the lab. The meth cooks had planned to one of several doors to make a quick escape out of lab and in to their secret bomb detonation area in a nearby wooded area. Their plan was designed to kill anyone, particularly drug enforcement agents, who discovered their secret meth lab operation.

Luckily, the detectives investigating the case discovered their plan and their lab without injury. But what if the lab or the pipe bombs had been discovered by children exploring the woods near their home or hikers on a nature walk found them before the detectives did? Nothing can stop that from happening except Keep reading →

When the South Central Kentucky Drug Task Force tried to serve a search warrant at 290 Gasper River Road in Auburn, what they saw would have made anyone freeze in their tracks. Inside the residence, they found a meth lab with 16 gas cylinders that were five feet high containing several gallons of what they suspect was anhydrous ammonia gas. If the explosion potential of those tanks wouldn’t make you start stepping slowly backwards, what they saw next just might. Police also discovered what appeared to be an explosive device that was still in the process of being completed. And if that weren’t enough to make you say “whoa”, maybe what the meth cook was doing with the electric lines would. The meth cook, police said, had been stealing electricity from the Warren Rural Electric power lines by using an altered meter with the main cables Keep reading →

Mobile, Alabama residents can now text message tips to law enforcement officials, if they suspect anyone is using, selling, or manufacturing methamphetamine.

Beginning Thursday, May 29, 2008, people who observe suspicious activity are encouraged to text the word Meth to 839863 (”TextMe”). The message sender will then receive a reply back, requesting information about whether they are reporting a deal, a meth lab, or someone purchasing meth ingredients. A follow question requesting the location of the crime will also be asked of the sender. Law enforcement says the sender’s information will remain anonymous.

Source: al.com “Text messages to alert authorities about meth” May 29, 2008

A Tift county man was air lifted to the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta, after his mobile meth lab home located at 145 Pines Drive in Ty Ty exploded in to flames.  Police found evidence inside the home that confirmed that the explosion was caused by cooking the ingredients used to make methamphetamine. A cleanup team was sent to the scene after the fire to decontaminate the area.

Source: “Trailer explodes in Ty Ty“, by Angie Thompson, senior reporter, tiftongazette.com

On Friday, May 23, 2008, Police arrived at 612 S.W. Utah St in Camas, Washington home for the second time in 7 years. Neighbors had alerted police, this time, that there were strange odors coming from the home. It was 6 a.m., when police arrived at the home with a search warrant in hand. It didn’t take long for police to discover that the odors that neighbors complained about were not the aromas of cheap coffee brewing. The occupants had just made another kind of pick-me-up that had nothing to do with caffeine. Keep reading →

Councilwoman Christine Croce has introduced legislation that seeks to provide some protection to home buyers. She wants anyone who owns a home or rental property that was once used as a meth lab to record that information on a city form, a form that would be given to a new buyer. If her legislation gets passed, selling a meth lab home without disclosing that information to a buyer would be considered a first-degree misdemeanor. The crime would be punishable by a maximum of 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Source: ohio.com “Green tackles meth lab property legislation“, May 27, 2008

A meth lab explosion in Centerville, TN resulted in Johnny Harrington going to the hospital. He is listed in critical but stable condition at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. After the explosion, neighbors reported they saw Johnny running from the home, screaming in pain and begging for someone to help him. One neighbor said that his eyelids looked like they had been burned off in the explosion.

Neighbors reported that they never suspected that Johnny was making meth in his home. One neighbor said he wouldn’t have recognized that smells coming from the home were those produced by cooking of meth. Police reassured him by saying “you’d know it, if you smelled it”. Witnesses reported that the back door and windows blew out and the roof lifted off of the home. Police who arrived at the scene warned onlookers to stay away from the scene in order to protect their own health.

Police report that once Harrington has recovered from his burns, he will be removed from the hospital in hand cuffs. He will be charged on the suspicion of manufacturing methamphetamine. What will happen to his home? Will it be sold as a foreclosure?

Source: newchannel5.com, “Meth Lab Explosion Injures Hickman County Man“.

Anytime methamphetamine is cooked, it leaves widespread contamination behind. In the process of cooking the chemicals used to make methamphetamine, toxic chemicals travel through the air landing in places you might never expect them to. The contamination in a home or any other area used to make methamphetamine is extremely costly for the homeowner.

What gets contaminated when someone cooks meth in a house or apartment?

Basically, to figure out what gets contaminated by cooking the chemicals used to make meth, think of it this way:

Dump the house upside down and whatever comes out is considered contaminated. Some of that will include the furniture, any clothing, bed linens, drapes, curtains, towels, toys, game systems, computers and laptops, printers, stereos, cameras, telephones, cell phones, televisions, and appliances. Any surface, whether soft or hard, will contain toxic residue.

Ok, now now it’s time to turn the house upright again and look inside. See the ceilings, walls, carpets, carpet padding, cabinets, ventilation systems used for heating & air conditioning, counter tops, window sills, door frames, and wood trim? They’re contaminated too.

What do the cleanup contractors have to do to cleanup the property? Contents of the home are usually destroyed. The interior of the home is sometimes strip down to the studs. On homes that are not completely destroyed by meth contamination, clean up can sometimes save the home. Contractors will remove all residue from any surfaces inside the home.

What proof is there that a meth lab home has been totally decontaminated? After a complete decontamination of the home has been completed, samples are taken from surfaces inside the home. Those samples are then sent to a testing lab in Washington, D.C. to determine if an contamination still exists. If the home tests “clean”, they will issue a certification that buyers can use to assure any future buyers that the home is safe to live in.

How “clean” does a home have to be to receive a certification that it is safe to live in? In order for a home to be certified to national standards, contaminating residue must be less than the equivalent of a package of Sweet N’Low spread across two and a half football fields.

A Denver, CO woman got a lot more than rent money, when she rented her home to a used car salesman and his mortgage broker wife, and 7 year old child, according to an article published on denverpost.com.

“Before my kids leave for school, I drink a cup of coffee and meditate for an hour. This inward-looking time puts me into a current in which life is less effortful, less a race, less scary; I become calm, and full of certainty about everything . . . until the phone rings, and it’s my 17-year-old. He’s in his car in front of the rental house, and there are a lot of police. And a hazmat vehicle. Sheets of plywood barricade each window. Doors padlocked.

Goodbye, quiet certainty. Hello, fear and struggle. I arrive to find a man, crouched down on one knee, facing the front of the house, writing on bright red and orange cardboard notices. Lengths of “Denver Police Line, Do Not Enter, Crime Scene” lie in tangled heaps on the grass. The letters DEA are emblazoned on the back of his jacket.”

She now faces what thousands of homeowners face when they rent their homes and apartments to people who use their property to make methamphetamine. Whether you are the renter of a property or you are the person who is renting your property to someone else, the toxic by-products produced by a meth cook will change life as you know it. Linda King, the woman who wrote the story for the Denver Post, is now faced Keep reading →