Meth Calls

[FHandz17]

Are you guys and girls encountering meth on any of your calls, be it medical, accidental fires or leaks of propane or anhydrous ammonia. It seems to be Missouri's new "cash crop", and now they cook it in the city, not just down by the river. We get awareness training all the time on the dangers encountering meth cooks and their booby trapped houses. We had a call for a mobile lab 2 hours after our last class.

Point being, it is getting out of control here. There are certainly dangerous chemicals and people involved, and I was curious if you have ran across it yet.

[Steamer]

It's definitely on the increase on Southern Ohio. We've had 5 or 6 labs in the region, both fixed and mobile, just in the last month or so. This job is dangerous enough without these morons out there creating these situations with chemicals and booby traps.
Originally, I think the labs were perceived as an urban problem. I've always felt it would end up in rural areas simply because of the lower levels of available law enforcement resources. I think we've just seen the tip of the iceberg. It's probably gonna get worse before it gets better.

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Steve Gallagher
Chillicothe (Ohio) Fire Department


[This message has been edited by Steamer (edited 05-15-2001).]

[ttjjss]

we have had our share of meth calls as well, it is worse in a few counties close to us but we see it as well, two calls come to mind that we have had, one was called in as an MVA, we arrived on the scene to find a car in the ditch with the trunk lid gone and the back seat sitting up against the dash, seems these two idiots had an old air tank in the trunk filled with anhydrous, well you know what that stuff does to most metals, it ate the valve up and when it let go, it came out of the trunk like a rocket, the force blew the trunk lid off the car and the back seat flew forward and hit the guys in the front seat, they were ok except for some burns from the anhydrous, . the other call was a house fire at about midnight in june of 1999, we roll up and see flames coming out the north and south windows on the east end of this small house, well no utilities were connected so we knew something was up, we hit the fire with dual 1 1/2" lines and blacked it out in just a few seconds, well, upon further inspection, in the bathroom just west of the kitchen, which was fully involved, we found 5 quart jars of liquid ether, the lids were swelled up , the next morning the ATF guys said that in another couple of minutes if that stuff had exploded just wrong ,it could have leveled a quarter square block, and here we were with 17 of our 18 people right in the kill zone, would have been disastrious. it was started from a burner being knocked over while they were cooking some of that crap we all call meth. we all remember that every time we roll up on another structure fire . it is scary out there , TYLER

[ttjjss]

just remembered another call, a dept about 9 miles south of us rolled on a structure fire about a half mile out of their town, was burning in a room on the back side of the house, they did a quick knockdown and when they went inside they found that the guy had cut a hole in his bedroom floor and had his lab underneath the floor, his elderly mother never knew what was going on, he had a fan blowing the fumes out from under the house but knocked over something and set the house on fire, same guy about 6 months later was milking ether out of the cans and had one explode on him, had burns all over, but was right back at it in just a few weeks, how do you spell IDIOT.

[Althea Forhan]

Out here (County in general) Meth, Marijuana,etc. are very big. Because it's a rural area people don't think they'll get caught. We have a pretty good Drug Task Force, though they aren't interested in the minor stuff.

Althea

[FEOBob]

Meth has become a tremendous problem here in Eastern Washington. Our local Sherrif/Police/DEA task force has busted around five to ten labs a week since the first of the year, just in our county. My engine company has been on four working fires in houses with labs this year. The Haz-Mat team goes on three to four a week for decon.

It's becoming a huge drain on our regional fire service, law enforcement, and even organizations like State Department of Ecology.

[F52 Westside]

Oops - look at the next post..

[This message has been edited by F52 Westside (edited 05-17-2001).]

[F52 Westside]

I have not seen any in our area (southeastern MI)yet. I just attended a class on Meth Labs 2 weeks ago. It is on the upswing in the westside of MI. It is some nasty crap.. with all the chemicals used and by products created from the cooking.



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Eddie C. - a.k.a - PTFD21
Local 3008
"Doin' it for lives n' property"

[OLE]

It's alive and well here in northern Iowa! The anhydrous ammonia is easily available here to make the crap with. I guess they use ammonia to speed up the cooking process thus makes the by-products even more toxic. The dopers actually put the by-products in plastic containers and throw them in ditches along the highway for people (mostly young kids) to pick-up during the spring. Now they are telling kids to look out for like 2 Liter bottles with liquids that don't look like the liquid that should be in there..... I'm glad that our sheriff and city police dept's. will tell us before we go into a house, if they are suspicous of having meth. We just have to make sure that the owners don't find out that we were informed just to save our own asses! Go to court jsut to protect our own *** from a bunch of dopers......what the hell is wrong with that picture!!!????