Explosions have hotel residents concerned

Lolita Harper

A bright red sticker in the window of the motel room was the only

visible evidence left Friday morning from the explosion of a

suspected drug lab at the Costa Mesa Motor Inn on Harbor Boulevard

the night before.

“Warning, keep out. Hazardous materials,” the sign read.

But residents of the curious motel community had much more to say

Friday afternoon as they lingered around the forbidden room, each

telling their tales of the night before.

At 8:52 p.m. Costa Mesa Police officers were conducting an

investigation at the Costa Mesa Motor Inn -- not related to the blast

-- when they heard a loud noise in another room, Lt. Dale Birney said

in a press release. When they got to the room, officers saw remnants

of the explosion, suspected hazardous materials and called the fire

department, detectives and the Orange County Lab Response Task Force.

Joseph Francis Piquette, 41, was staying in the room and was

arrested on suspicion of possession of chemical materials with the

intent to manufacture. He is being held on $50,000 bail and is

scheduled to be arraigned Monday.

The investigation of the explosion and its causes are ongoing,

Birney said.

Diane Hammon and her three sons, ages 12,14 and 19, were next door

to Piquette’s room Thursday night when they were startled by the

noise of the police helicopter flying over head. The search lights

flooded the motel and airborne officers broadcast the descriptions of

missing children to the residents, she said.

Then Hammon heard a loud bang.

“I thought it was a gun shot,” she said.

Her next door neighbor, in room 701, ran out and in what seemed

like an instant the police were there, she said.

“Some smoke came out at first but then they completely shut the

doors and there was nothing,” she said.

Nothing but more uniformed officers instructing the Hammon family

to come out to the parking lot and strip to their underwear. They had

been exposed to hazardous materials and needed to be scrubbed from

head to toe, officials told them. Hammon stepped into one plastic

pool, where she was doused with water and then to the next, where she

was scrubbed.

“They handed us some suits and put us in an ambulance,” Hammon

said.

“We were all huddled together and soaking wet, so they gave us

some blankets,” her 19-year-old son, Andy, added.

The family of four then sat in the waiting room of Hoag Hospital,

where they waited to take yet another shower.

“No less than 15 minutes,” she said. “They timed us to make sure.

Then they handed us more paper clothes.”

Hammon said she did not know Piquette well but he was always

good-natured and friendly.

“He always said, ‘hi,’” she said.

Although he did not have the stereotypical demeanor of a criminal,

Hammond and other residents of the motel were not surprised to learn

of possible drug crimes at the Motor Inn.

“This place is bad,” said resident Jennifer Riley, who was on her

balcony smoking a cigarette on Friday afternoon. “There are drugs all

over the place. I had someone who knows that I am pregnant come up

and ask me if I wanted to buy. I don’t want my baby growing up in

this type of place. I want outta here.”

Riley, her fiancee and his daughter moved into the Motor Inn five

months ago because they had nowhere else to turn.

“We had some problems, you know,” Riley said in her thick Boston

accent.

Riley’s story is similar to Hammon’s, whose is similar to most

other residents at the Motor Inn. Although it is a motel, a good

chunk of its guests, are semi-permanent residents. Many have four and

five people living in one 10- by 20-foot room with a hot plate. The

weekly rate is $242, which averages out to about $1,100 a month.

Every 28 days, the residents have to check out and check back in, to

avoid being considered tenants, Hammon said.

“We’ve been trying to get out of here forever,” said Hammon, a

10-month resident. “But with all of our money going to pay rent here,

it’s hard to save enough to move.”

Her story is echoed through the halls and walkways of the

impoverished community. People down on their luck could check in to a

place with a laundry, a game room, a pool and barbecue pits without

the costly deposits and first month’s rent and credit checks required

by most apartment complexes. A week turns into a month and then the

months add up, while the residents struggle to stay in the black.

Harbor Motor Inn Manager Hector Almaraz on Friday afternoon denied

allegations that his motel was a hotbed of illegal activity. He

doubted the explosion was even drug related.

“It hasn’t been proven that it was a meth lab,” Almaraz said. “...

But Costa Mesa put on quite a show. Of course, they have to make sure

but it looked a lot worse than it is.”

When asked about the bright red hazardous materials sign on the

window of the unit where the explosion was, Almaraz said it was a

safety precaution. Law enforcement officials were simply covering all

their bases by posting the sign. He was so sure the room posed no

danger he allowed his maids to clean the unit Friday.

“If it were that hazardous, they wouldn’t have let us clean it

ourselves,” Almaraz said.

There was no fire or significant damage to the room, police

reports show. No other rooms were involved and the explosion and

chemicals were contained in one room, police said. The Hammons, three

police officers and Piquette were decontaminated at the scene and

taken to Hoag as a precautionary measure, Birney said.

The manager also scoffed at tenant allegations that drugs are

rampant in the motel community.

“Of course they said that, doesn’t it make for a better story?” he

said.

Hammon held out a precautionary sheet given to her by the

emergency room doctor. It warned of symptoms of headaches, dizziness,

shortness of breath, chest pain, confusion, coughing and throat

irritation. She said she could still feel constriction in her lungs.

“How can I make this up?” she said, pointing to the doctor’s

signature on her discharge papers.