Ambulance

BCEMS Web

The Employee Website

Clandestine Methamphetamine: What you should know

10 Steps for EMS Survival at Clandestine Methamphetamine Lab Scenes

Is It a Meth Lab?

  • A CML can be in a house, a storage unit, or a motor vehicle or trailer. There may be a urine-like, heavy metal, or ammonia smell, or an odor like a dirty pet cage. You also may find unusual amounts of discarded containers of Red Devil lye cans, large metal drums, bags of book matches with only the striker plates missing, too many ammonia or rubbing alcohol containers, discarded coffee filters, and empty boxes of cold medications that contain ephedrine.
  • A chemical dumpsite creates sterile ground.
  • Carpets may feel spongy. Ceilings, walls, and surfaces tend to be stained. Metal corrodes; brass turns bright blue, creating a telltale sign.
  • Mason jars, Pyrex dishes, baby food jars, and other seemingly innocent containers can contain meth that is being settled out from liquids during a "cold cook." Even coffee cups containing a brown liquid could be holding meth oil, a poisonous byproduct.
  • People cooking meth generally have red hands and necks and dark or missing fingernails. Users are often skinny, pock-marked from digging at itchy rashes, lack mucous membranes (because they have destroyed the septum between their nose and mouth), are nervous or hyper, and cannot sleep. Children often appear to have attention deficit disorder (ADD).
  • Your #1 goal is always life safety.
  • Stabilize the scene for public safety.

By Mona Vanek, NREMT-B, Ret.

Editor's note: Information for this article was derived from a six-hour course for Montana EMS , conducted at Plains, Montana on emergency response to clandestine drug labs. The course met OSHA 29 CFR 1910.120 (q), (ii) First Responder Operations Level. Instructor: Stephen A. Hester. Used with his permission. Hester, a hazardous material training specialist for Montana State University Extension Services, can be reached at the Fire Services Training School at Great Falls, Montana, (406) 771-4439.

April 2002, EMS Magazine - The abuse of methamphetamine a potent psychostimulant is an extremely serious and growing problem. Although use of methamphetamine initially was limited to a few urban areas in the Southwest, several major Western cities and Hawaii have seen dramatic increases in its use, and rural areas throughout the country are becoming more affected by the drug, writes Glen R. Hanson, Ph.D., D.D.S., acting director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), at the NIDA web site . According to the site, this addictive stimulant made easily in clandestine laboratories with relatively inexpensive over-the-counter ingredients.

Clandestine methamphetamine labs, posing unprecedented hazardous situations to all EMS , aren't only in neighborhood houses or hidden in the forests somewhere. Motels, RVs, storage units, and vans can house them, too. “Rolling” (mobile) labs are also rapidly spreading throughout the northwest. For example, one big, complete, commercial lab was found in an 8'x10' fully enclosed trailer. The trailer was seal-packed, secured with two padlocks, and could easily have been booby-trapped. Smaller labs are being found in car trunks. The would-be chemists brewing their deadly concoctions range in age from youth to elderly grandparents.

Three guiding rules of EMS must be remembered when dealing with clandestine methamphetamine labs (CMLs):

Cleanup Costs

The cost of cleaning up a structure that housed a meth lab can range anywhere from $3,000 to $100,000 and the owner is liable for the cleanup. Up to $25,000 of recovery funds to help qualifying EMS agencies allay the costs they incur while dealing with CMLs can be obtained. Call the Environmental Protection Agency's Local Government Reimbursement (LGR) help line at (800) 431-9209. Before the need arises, learn about and get an application for the LGR program.

Only costs incurred as a direct result of the response are allowable. EPA reimburses qualifying local governments for costs such as:

  • Expendable materials and supplies
  • Renting or leasing equipment
  • Special technical and laboratory services
  • Evacuation services
  • Decontamination of equipment
  • Overtime pay for employees
  • Replacement of equipment lost or destroyed
  • Lab packing, transportation, and disposal services

Four criteria must be met:

  • You are a local government (e.g., town, township, city, municipality, parish, federally recognized Indian tribe).
  • You responded to a meth lab involving hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants.
  • You did not have money in your budget for the response.
  • You were unable to recover costs from the parties.

Here are ten steps to consider for your continuing safety:

  1. Slow down! Stop and count to ten when you arrive on any scene. Use those ten seconds, and extreme caution, to really visualize and recognize everything you see and smell. Meth labs are highly toxic and inflammatory, and cooking meth is a highly volatile process. Eliminate ignition sources, static, and radios. Don't smoke!
  2. Don't go into the house if you think it might be a meth lab! Never turn off electricity or propane. If the meth-cooking process is disturbed or interrupted, an explosion can result. Be alert for booby traps.
  3. Avoid touching contaminated victims. Don't eat, drink, or wipe your sleeve across your face on-scene. As soon as meth enters a body, whether through skin or breathing, the person is contaminated. Decontamination and detoxification will be necessary. When individuals leave a meth lab they carry contamination with them, thus cross-contaminating innocent people. Chemicals can cling to their clothes, drop from their footsteps, and be absorbed by their skin.
  4. Recognize what you observe in the hot zone. Shut the door and begin stabilizing the scene. Protect the chain of evidence, stay out of it, and don't cross-contaminate.
  5. Don't step on discolored ground that's devoid of plants. Your shoes aren't the non-absorption type necessary to your safety if you step in byproducts of the meth cooking process. Ambulance crews also don't wear appropriate repellent clothing or use proper breathing apparatus for entering active meth labs.
  6. Your hardest challenge will be to back off and let a screaming person inside a burning building (or vehicle) die.
  7. If a meth cook is taking place you can figure that someone is going to die. Don't let it be you! Carbon monoxide exists in hot cooks and people in clandestine meth labs can collapse and die. Children are especially at high risk. If you must go inside, get in and out as quickly as possible. Drag the victim outside before giving care. If safely possible, vent the site, but stay upwind.
  8. Control the scene; optimize responder safety by minimizing crew. Create a defendable space and protect the public by moving bystanders away. Evacuate the area, moving everyone 330-660 feet away. Everything within that one-two city block area is the hot zone. Blockade access routes. These can become long-term situations. You're dealing with a vaporous gas, so don't go into low places, such as ditches or basements.
  9. Ignore bystander's criticism. Their opinions are unsafe to you. You want to go home from a scene alive!
  10. Involve appropriate agencies that will engage cleanup experts.

Your EMS agency may elect to enact a self-protective policy that states, in effect, We do not do clandestine labs. This is unrealistic. You may do nothing, but you can do no harm. Report any suspected CML to the authorities.

Mona Vanek is a retired NREMT-B from Western Sanders County Community Ambulance Service, Montana , a resident historian, a happily married great-grandmother, and a trained Hospice volunteer.

To properly decontaminate victims and any contaminated crewmembers on-scene:

[Take the Test]