RESIDENTS ALLOWED HOME AFTER GIANT ECSTASY BUST

Tenants were being allowed back into a Richmond apartment building
late Wednesday after an evacuation prompted by the discovery of what
RCMP called Canada's largest Ecstasy lab.

The massive operation, discovered Tuesday night after a tenant on the
second floor of the three-storey building complained about liquids
dripping from her ceiling, had the capacity to produce $250,000 worth
of the drug every few days.

``I feel confident in saying this is the biggest such lab ever found
in Canada,'' said Corporal Doug Culver of the RCMP's drug section. ``I
can't imagine any other being bigger than this. A huge amount was
being produced here.''

The manager of the 33-unit building at 8540 Westminster Highway called
police after discovering the lab inside a two-bedroom rental apartment
which was connected to a second two-bedroom suite by a hole in the
wall.

There was no furniture or any sign that the suites were used for
anything except manufacturing the drugs, police said.

Inside the top-floor suites, police found buckets of chemicals,
metre-long piping, glass cylinders and tubing.

With the materials and chemicals inside, Culver said producing Ecstasy
in its powdered unpackaged form would take a few days of continuous
operations.

The drug would then be put into a gelatin capsule in another
location.

``Making this would not have been much more difficult than making a
batch of brownies,'' said Culver. ``But the difference is if you
screwed up the brownies, you are not going to have something blow up.''

RCMP are searching for the tenants of the suites, who have not
returned to the building since the operation was busted.

Meanwhile, Health Canada officials in disposable protective suits
scoured the apartments where the lab was located and other places in
the building for traces of dangerous chemicals.

The pungent, sweet smell of the chemical oil of sassafras, the
flavouring in root beer, lingered over the building hours after all
the materials were removed from the suite.

Among the chemicals found were flammable solvents, carcinogenics and
sulphuric acid. Rusting containers labelled methylene chloride and
orange cartons full of hot plates, scales and fans were moved out of
the apartments and placed on the building's front lawn.

Fire investigator Gordon Gill said Wednesday the operation created
three possible hazards: Chemical poisons could have seeped out of the
suites; fires could have ignited spontaneously; and the materials in
the suites could have exploded.

Police said the chemicals would be packaged in 40-gallon drums and
incinerated.