METH LAB FORCES HOTEL EVACUATION

Crime: An Anonymous Tip Led To The Abandoned Room.

La Palma-Dozens of out-of-town hotel guests,some here to visit Disneyland,
were left roomless Tuesday morning and again Tuesday night.

A trio of haggard Japanese businessmen - just arrived from Los Angeles
International Airport - cooled their heels alongside their baggage in a
nearby parking lot, unable to check in.

They were among about 100 people desolated about 10a.m. Tuesday when an
anonymous tip led a manager at the La Quinta Inn to Room 701 on the hotel's
seventh floor. There he found an abandoned methamphetamine laboratory and a
potentially dangerous yellow chemical haze.

The hotel, about 80 percent filled but with many guests out on business or
pleasure trips, was quickly evacuated. Specially-outfitted officers from
the California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement and the Orange County Lab
Response Team were brought in to gather evidence and clean up the volatile
chemicals and residue left behind at 3 Centerpointe Drive.

"This is crazy. This is a bad situation. They had total disregard for
everybody," said Walter Allen, special agent in charge for the California
Department of Justice's narcotics bureau in Santa Ana.

Guests were allowed to return to all but the top two floors of the hotel
late Tuesday afternoon. But the entire building was evacuated a second time
Tuesday night when cleanup work expected to last throughout the night
caused a new flare-up of toxic fumes.

The hotel's general manager, Victor Popp, discovered the lab, which left
the room covered in a yellowish chemical film. Cooking equipment and
chemical ingredients for the drug were strewn about.

Popp told police he was slightly dizzy and had a light headache for a
couple of hours after the discovery, but otherwise was fine. No one else
was injured.

"It was kinda scary. They just told us (by hotel public address system) to
leave the building. This was our very first visit to California," said
Krissy Whorrall, 14, of Colorado.

It was the second time in the last two years that a meth lab has been
discovered in a room at that La Quinta, authorities said.

Allen said there was a danger the chemicals and haze could ignite, setting
off an explosion that could have hurt guests in nearby rooms or emergency
workers cleaning up the room.

No one was arrested.

Guests were treated to free meals at nearby restaurants, or like arriving
Japanese guests Isamu Nakazato, Koue Miyazawa and Tom Sawada, all of Tokyo,
they waited outside in a parking lot.