CLARKSTON - A Clarkston neighborhood is a little bit safer.

The Quad Cities Drug task force shut down a meth lab at 1541 Maple Street Tuesday night. Police said inside the house was a red phosphorous meth lab, actively cooking in a bedroom closet. Two men, Lonnie Cox and Conrad Paull, both 48 and from Clarkston were arrested Tuesday night and booked into the Asotin County jail. The two men are charged with Manufacture of a Controlled Substance and are being held on $100,000 bonds.

Whitman County Sheriff Brett Myers, who is in charge of the drug task force, said this is the first lab taken down in the quad cities in the last year. He said that's thanks to regulations that have made it harder to buy meth ingredients. Myers said in years past they came across three to seven labs a year. He said this house has been part of an active investigation over the last couple of weeks after receiving information from informants about drug activity.

Because of the dangers of meth labs, firefighters respond to these types of calls.

"A lot of times the chemicals that these people are using can be really volatile," said Asotin County Fire Chief Noel Hardin. "So really you have a little mini hazmat area there so if the workers or officers get exposed somehow, we are there to do some form of decontamination as some of it is so volatile that if some other chemical were introduced to it .. it could burst into flames, so we are there for structure protection but primarily we are there for the safety of the officers."

Hardin said they responded to the Maple Street lab at about 8:00 p.m. Tuesday night and were there again Wednesday morning.

"Just to be on standby while they were performing their duties," said Hardin. "Then once they made entry and found out what they had then we came in to make sure that the scene was stable. Then they backed out because of the situation and waited for the processing team from the Washington State patrol."

Hardin said meth labs can even be mobile and pose a threat not just to those in the house but to an entire neighborhood.

"We have seen where people have rolling meth labs in their vehicles and U-haul trucks and storage units and in homes like this and it's being done pretty much anywhere and it can be dangerous just because of the types of chemicals they are using, "said Hardin. "Again it is a hazmat area, even just breathing the air inside of a home like that could do lung and health damage to someone."