COMMUNITIES IN DANGER

Illicit Drug Making Combustible

Editor's note: The following is the third in a four-part series
examining the effects of meth addiction on individuals, families and
communities.

In the dead of winter late one night in 2002, 45 people from 15
families scurried for survival when the Maples Apartments burned to
the ground in Woodbury.

Flames could be seen for miles and the embers smoldered for days. The
fire drew volunteer firefighters and equipment from as far away as
Kittrell in Rutherford County, and Centertown in Warren County.

The blaze was caused by a meth lab explosion in the home of Robert
Wayne Barrett and his wife, Melissa Carol. She was treated for
second- and third-degree burns at Vanderbilt, and their daughter was
also treated for burns.

In 2001, a Cannon County meth lab was discovered only nine feet from
the fence of a busy day care center, and in August 2004 a meth lab
was discovered near Bellwood Elementary School at 1018 Glaze Court in
Murfreesboro.

In July 2003, then-state Sen. Larry Trail, D-Murfreesboro, called
Tennessee "on the brink of a real disaster" with regard to
methamphetamine and urged the state to "get on the front end" of the situation.

"It's sent thousands of Tennesseans to jail, it's taken 500 children
from their families and cost taxpayers millions of dollars in
environmental cleanup costs," Karen Sowers, a dean at the University
of Tennessee's College of Social Work, told the Associated Press in late 2003.

Methamphetamine abuse arrests started in Rutherford County in 1998,
according to DNJ reports, but the first three clandestine
methamphetamine labs were not discovered in Murfreesboro until late
2002. The trio of unrelated clandestine labs were discovered within a
48-hour period in November 2002 and represented the opening volley in
a serious battle in Rutherford County.

Those first meth labs were found in a neighborhood subdivision and
two motels within Murfreesboro's city limits. The first lab was
identified following a blaze at the Hunters Court apartment of
William Jacob Barnes, who was treated for burns to his face, hands,
arms and legs.

Since then, clandestine labs have been discovered in various places,
including, disturbingly, motor vehicles in the parking lots of major
retail stores in Murfreesboro located on Old Fort Parkway.

Nationwide, in a survey of 500 law enforcement agencies from 45
states, 58 percent of the respondents cited meth as their biggest
drug problem, far surpassing cocaine, marijuana and heroin.

In terms of major community damage, Tennessee has dodged a serious
bullet. In other states, whole communities have been evacuated.

For example, 230 residents of Old Monroe, Mo., had to evacuate due to
an ammonia tank leak caused by meth producers who had not properly
resealed a storage tank after stealing some of the chemical.

In Utica, Ky., 50 people were evacuated from their homes and several
highway crashes were caused by a similar event.

In Brandon, Fla., 2,000 students had to be evacuated from schools
because of an anhydrous ammonia leak caused by yet another meth
producer's bungled attempt to steal ammonia.

Unsuspecting apartment neighbors have been affected, too, as in Fort
Payne, Ala., where a meth lab was discovered in the basement of an
assisted-living complex. There, the lab was discovered when it
exploded. No residents were injured but all had to be evacuated.

And then there is the open road.

"People would be shocked to know what travels up and down I-24 every
day - drugs, wanted persons, felons," Rutherford County Detective
Capt. Chuck Thomas told the DNJ in 1999.

At that time, the sheriff's department had concluded a 30-minute
high-speed chase that ended in a roar of bullets in the Blackman
community. Sheriff's deputies arrested an Oklahoma resident and
turned up 11 pounds of toxic red phosphorous residue used to manufacture meth.

"Driven from their homes and motels, meth makers are increasingly
taking to America's roadways, mixing the bubbling brew in drug labs
inside tractor-trailers, rental trucks, cars and even motorcycles,"
the AP reported in a July 17, 2002 article.

By working in a moving vehicle, meth makers disperse the fumes and
the waste stays away from their dwellings.

There are two ways to produce methamphetamine, and the East and
Middle Tennessee regions favor the "ephedrine reduction" or "red
phosphorous" method, which uses common household items such as brake
fluid, Red Devil lye, muriatic acid, matchbook strikers and coffee
filters to strain the concoction.

"All these cans, all these are flammable or acid-based materials
which are hazardous to the environment," said Jason Mathis, a DEA
certified methamphetamine expert who works within the Rutherford
County Sheriff's Department. Other paraphernalia used in meth labs
include mason jars or other containers and Coleman fuel.

One pound of meth "cook" leaves five to six pounds of hazardous waste
behind, which is hard to dispose of without danger of detection,
authorities said.

"If you're not finding common household trash ... you're probably
stepping into a hazardous waste area of a meth lab," said Detective
Egon Grissom, who heads the Narcotics Division of the Rutherford
County Sheriff's Department.

"It's usually discarded in the forests or streams or trash dumps," Mathis said.

In the past few months, Mathis said, meth lab waste was discovered at
four different locations. One was in a stream that flows into Stones
River, and one was in a new construction area near a new water line.
Two others were discovered in trash cans that belonged to a neighbor
of the meth producer.

"See, that's part of the danger. Kids are out there, and they don't
know what they're looking at, and we won't know if they're exposed to
it if nobody tells us," Grissom said.

A property's value plummets when a meth lab is identified on it, and
according to the DEA, "often the value of the contaminated property
is less than the cleanup costs and owners simply walk away from their
investments, leaving the cleanup costs to the state or local governments."

Between 1992 and 2002, the number of cleanups skyrocketed from 394 to
more than 7,000 nationwide, the DEA reported.

There are other dangers related to methamphetamine labs, state Rep.
Kent Coleman, D-Murfreesboro, said. Coleman served last year as a
member of a joint committee to study and address the problem.

"Meth labs are starting to result in a lot of guns and related
crime," he said, noting that in recent raids, law enforcement
confiscated a number of guns.

A pair of drive-by shootings helped Rutherford County Sheriff's
detectives discover a meth lab in late 2002 when they were
investigating the shootings. At the scene of one of the related
shootings, DNJ archives show, detectives found shell casings from a
12-gauge shotgun and an assault rifle.

"It's become more dangerous for law enforcement," Coleman told the DNJ.

Firefighters, too, are endangered as they can go into a blaze unaware
of the presence of phosphene gas, a byproduct that can kill or cause
permanent injury to those who inhale it.

The scourge is seriously draining government resources and coffers, too.

The Cannon County jail last year was seriously overcrowded. The
structure was built to imprison 42 inmates, but last February, it
held more than 90 on one particular day. Now, there are between 45-60
each week, according to County Executive Mike Gannon, who has been on
the job for three years now.

Cannon County Jail Sgt. Wava Curry said the problem is still out
there, but a new law has made some headway in thwarting production of
meth by limiting the amount of ingredients people can buy over the counter.

Fortunately, meth production is not the problem in Rutherford County
that it is for Cannon, Warren or other counties in East Tennessee
where a working meth lab can go undetected in a kitchen, garage, or
backyard shed.

For one thing, those counties are much more sparsely populated and
the fumes of a meth lab aren't as easily detected in those areas.

Another reason, Grissom said, is that the sheriff has made this a
priority for the county and has employed sizable resources in
battling the drug.

"We work with the pharmacies, we work with the stores, we work with
the citizens," Grissom said, to build awareness to the dangers of the
drug. The Rutherford County Sheriff's Department welcomes tips,
anonymous or otherwise, about suspected methamphetamine or other
narcotics-related activities on the tip line at 895-3609.

But Rutherford County is not immune, and clandestine labs' dangers do
reach here and more densely populated areas, too.

"What's disturbing is when you think how many are out there that
nobody's called on," Grissom said.