Finding meth next door

The power and electricity had been shut off and the house was vented of its volatile fumes.

It is an increasingly common scene throughout the Bay Area. Meth labs are extremely costly to neighbors and property owners. Not only do walls and floors get contaminated, drains and groundwater can be too.

Insurance companies are not likely to pay for the cleanup, and the owner will have to reimburse the state for the cost of hiring a waste hauler. The house will likely be condemned by the county until it's decontaminated and declared safe to reoccupy, said Special Agent in Charge Bob Cook who manages the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement (BNE) hazardous materials team. The BNE manages hazmat-certified narcotics officers from state and local task forces in San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, Monterey and San Benito counties. The agencies pool their resources and personnel to disassemble potentially explosive methamphetamine labs.

Disclosing hazard for property sale

The landlord will not have income or use of the property and will have to disclose the hazard to potential buyers. One Realtor swapping out a "For sale" sign for a "Sale pending" sign just a few doors down and around the corner from the police activity said he did not know if the seller would have to disclose a meth lab in the neighborhood.

"A meth lab in the neighborhood and you're selling a house. It doesn't look good. That's obvious," said the woman selling her house. As is the case with most neighbors of meth labs, she did not want to give her name.

The woman said she's lived in the neighborhood for 19 years and the neighbors look out for one another.

"I can tell you, it's a real shock to the neighborhood," she said.

Another neighbor who inched his way past the police car barricade for a better view also declined to give his name. Indicating the closed doors of each of the neighbor's, he described the lives he had come to know the past 15 years.

He thought his neighbor received the high 600s or low 700s (in thousands of dollars) for her home.

Whether large or small, the costs of cleaning up meth labs can be astronomical to the homeowner. Methamphetamine manufacturers typically rent locations for their labs to avoid detection.

"No matter the size, you can't safely walk into a lab and start pulling stuff out," Cook said. "This is a nice neighborhood. If you own property in California and you can drive by and see debris in the yard and things not maintained, then it's your responsibility to do something about it."

An old-timer's lab

San Jose police had apprehended the alleged methamphetamine cook, 53-year-old Arnold Duey Daniel, sometime before 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 18. The fugitive had run out of the house barefooted when deputies tried to serve an eviction notice. No one else was home.

San Jose Police Sgt. Tom Murphy said he was close enough to smell the fumes emanating from the house. It brought back memories of his days as a narcotics officer when methamphetamine or crank was predominantly made by out-law motorcycle gangs. That was 20 years ago.

The gangs would often hide the drugs in the crank case of their motorcycles and the chemicals they used were common in auto repair and body shops. The Garlough Drive meth lab was an old-timer's lab, he said. The house smelled like it contained phenyl-2-propanone or P-2-P, a precursor for methamphetamine before pseudoephedrine.

This haul was a witch's brew of dangerous chemicals. Among the notorious inventory were ethyl ether and ethanol in drums, iodine, acetone, red phosphorous, sodium hydroxide, hydrochloric acid, muriatic acid, sulfuric acid, phenyl acetic acid, potassium iodate, potassium thiocyanate, sodium nitrate and mysterious substances without labels or substances dubiously labeled by hand.

"The floors have chemical stains. The walls and ceilings are contaminated. The house will end up being red-tagged," Cook said. "We'll have to take floor samples and soil samples in the backyard and side yard.

"The bath tub was full of 5-gallon drums. He had about $10,000 worth of glassware. He's been cooking for a while," he said, adding, "We've been working very hard."

Chemicals to cook 10 pounds

Investigators said up to 10 pounds of methamphetamine per cycle could be cooked with the lab equipment they found, some of which were illegal to possess without a permit.

Also, the occupant - police were investigating the possibility of other people living in the house - had been collecting chemicals for a long time, a common characteristic of tweakers, said an undercover officer as he watched the inventory on the tarp expand row by row.

A neighbor, Hiram Quevado, said there were unusual activities at the meth lab house for the past 15 years. Sometimes two to six vehicles would be at the house on any given day.

"There were all kinds of garbage, a sofa, that motorcycle and an old vehicle. It was a terrible eyesore for everybody. You try to keep your place up. You never see a family situation over there like the rest of the neighborhood," Quevado said. "I'm glad finally something happened to get him out of the neighborhood. I'm just an old man speaking."