METH LABS PROMPT LESSONS

Program Aims To Teach Responders

As social worker Joan Courie raced to the house in rural Johnston County,
she knew two things: There was a methamphetamines lab on the premises, and
there were two young children living a few hundred feet away. But Courie,
who works for the Johnston County Department of Social Services, knew
little about how to protect children who had been exposed to meth's toxic
waste.

What was the best way to bathe the children? Should she destroy their
clothing and blankets? And how would she keep herself from inhaling the
nauseating fumes emanating from the lab?

Courie is one of more than 320 workers who will get answers to those
questions at a conference in Johnston County today and in Harnett County on
Tuesday.

The training, the first of its kind in the Triangle, is designed not only
for law enforcement officers, but also for anyone who might encounter home
meth labs in the line of duty. People attending will include firefighters,
rescue workers, sheriff's deputies, mental health staff, public health
officials, school social workers, child-abuse investigators and even people
who inspect low-income housing.

They will learn how to approach suspected meth labs, decontaminate the
people inside and protect themselves while doing it. They will also learn
what not to do: Disposing of meth's toxic by-products, for example,
requires special cleanup equipment.

The conference will draw workers from Johnston, Harnett, Franklin, Sampson
and Lee counties. It is not open to the public.

Meth cooks often hide themselves in rural areas away from neighbors,
because the labs emit intense odors.

On the night last year when Courie encountered her first meth lab, she was
astonished by what she saw -- and smelled. The lab was tucked in a barn
behind the house, with white powdery waste dumped right outside.

"When you walked out the back door, there was just this smell of ether that
slapped you in the face," Courie said. "I was concerned that something was
going to blow up."

Deputies arrested the children's father that night. Their mother admitted
to using the drug. Courie, who was investigating possible child neglect,
escorted the children to the home of another family member.

G. Earl Marrett, director of social services in Johnston County, helped
organize this week's conference after he attended similar training in
Asheville for social services staff. One fact he kept remembering: If his
workers were exposed to poisonous fumes, they might still suffer the
effects 20 years later.

"It blew my mind," Marrett said. "This had implications for lots of county
workers, not just [social services]."

Meth, also known as speed or crank, has slowly spread eastward across the
United States, reaching North Carolina in the past few years. Narcotics
agents say it is more debilitating and addictive than crack cocaine. It can
also be made quickly and cheaply at home from common household chemicals
and medicines.

While eastern North Carolina counties try to stay ahead of the
methamphetamine scourge, some western counties are awash in the drug -- and
well-acquainted with the dangers of the labs.

In early 2003, a Watauga County fireman was severely injured when he
happened on a meth lab while trying to extinguish a burning mobile home. As
he opened a crawl space door, Darien South inhaled chemical fumes that
eventually would cost him most of his lung capacity.

The Watauga County Department of Social Services, seeing the possible
danger to all workers who are sent to private homes, decided to take
action. The department has seen a 25 percent jump in foster care cases
since January 2003, an increase driven almost exclusively by
methamphetamine abuse, department Director Jim Atkinson said.

The department convened a group of local business, school, health and
government leaders. They were operating in the dark, without state
standards for how to respond to meth labs or how to decide whether a former
meth lab was now clean enough to live in.

So the Watauga group made its own checklist for responding to meth labs,
and counties across the state have informally adopted the rules. Joann
Lamm, who oversees child welfare services for the N.C. Division of Social
Services, said the state hopes to have its own policy on dealing with meth
labs by the end of the year. They will likely base their rules on Watauga's
model, Lamm said.

"Our community is not particularly happy about having the dubious
distinction of being the meth lab capital of the state," Atkinson said.
"[But] it has been a real eye-opener for us. It's given us a pretty good
sense of how unprepared we can be for something that's not in the norm."