IDENTIFYING METH LABS PART OF FIRE CONFERENCE

Nasal decongestants, coffee filters, anti-freeze, mop buckets, kitty litter
and drain cleaner.

The ingredients of an average household or a methamphetamine lab?

"I'll bet everyone here has been to a lab, and just not known it," said Paul
Haas, a fire investigator from the Anaheim Fire Department to his class Tuesday.

Haas spoke to more than 100 fire investigators from around the state on the
second day of the California conference of Arson Investigators.

The fire investigators gathered at the Embassy Suites on Madonna Road for
the three-day conference on Monday, their red fire trucks, bearing insignia
from many different cities, filling spaces across the hotel parking lot. The
event, held twice each year in San Luis Obispo, draws fire investigators to
learn from classes, ranging from media relations to insurance fraud to
vehicle fires.

On Tuesday afternoon, the group learned how to identify the presence of a
methamphetamine lab, a common cause of fires.

Haas gathered many of the common household items used to manufacture
methamphetamine on a table at the front of the room.

Though the basic components used to make the drug are quite specific, those
components can be found in many different household items.

For example, ephedrine, which is essential to the creation of
methamphetamine, can be found in most nasal decongestants and
over-the-counter stimulants.

Haas said the drug has even created a "gray market" in the advertising back
pages of magazines, where drug manufacturers can buy ephedrine in massive
amounts. Drug manufacturers crush the pills and, through a series of
chemical processes, create the powdery white stimulant.

More than 20,000 sites on the Internet are devoted to methamphetamine
manufacturing, Haas said, as well as many books, including "Secrets of
Methamphetamine Manufacture," by an author know as Uncle Fester.

Haas said this wide array of recipes and methods makes it difficult to
identity labs.

"Nothing is predictable," Haas said. "These people are out there cutting
corners, trying to invent new ways to make it. A lab can be as big as this
22-liter flask, or it can be made in this coffee cup. You has to start
thinking labs. If you see a trash bag filled with empty Sudafed boxes, you
should wonder."

Haas said many investigators approached him during the class break to say
they had discovered scenes they now realized were methamphetamine labs.

"This is the best training you can have," said Bob Ekiss, an investigator
from a private insurance company in San Diego.

Kevin Mc Bride, a fire investigator with the Arroyo Grande Fire Department
for 13 years, said he appreciated being able to look at the items commonly
used in a methamphetamine lab up close.

"It's not usually a safe environment when we see it," he said.