Burning questions hang over the Billings methamphetamine incineration

Law enforcement agents burned nearly 200 pounds of materials — not just 2 pounds of methamphetamine, as previously reported — inside an animal crematorium in Billings on Sept. 10, according to burn records reviewed by Montana Free Press.

That revelation compounds existing questions, circling on social media and in government investigations, about how federal and local law enforcement officials used the city’s animal crematorium to dispose of illegal drugs and potentially other evidence, sickening nonprofit animal shelter employees working in the same building.  

More than a dozen employees of Yellowstone Valley Animal Shelter, a facility that held about 75 cats and dogs on the day of the burn, reported headaches, nausea and dizziness after thick, gray, chemical-smelling smoke escaped the city’s incineration area. 

The shelter’s executive director, Triniti Halverson, told MTFP on Friday that she was not given any warning about the burn that day and that two of her employees are still dealing with lingering health symptoms more than two weeks after the incident, including coughing and difficulty breathing. 

“What they did here baffles me,” said Stacy Zinn, a former special agent with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration who oversaw drug disposals during her tenure. “Obviously it wasn’t protocol.” 

The first sign that something was wrong came shortly after noon, when Halverson was meeting with another employee just outside the facility. She smelled something like bleach, she recalled, at first making her worry that a shelter employee might be using harsh cleaning products near the animals. When she ran around the building, she saw  dark, hazy smoke coming from the city’s incineration room. 

In the area where people can observe ongoing burns, Halverson said, she saw a small group standing around, including someone who she said she recognized as an employee with the police department’s animal control unit. Shocked by the visible and pungent smoke, Halverson said, she demanded to know what was going on. 

“And they just stared at me. Just point-blank stared at me,” Halverson said.

One of the shelter’s rooms used to hold animals shares a wall with the city’s incineration area, Halverson said. Within minutes of confronting the group in the burn area, she and other shelter employees ran to check on the most at-risk animals closest to the incinerator: A room with four litters of kittens infected with ringworm. When they opened the door, they saw the room was full of gray smoke. 

In a panic, Halverson said she and other employees rushed to find pandemic-era face masks to guard against the smoke, and donned other protective equipment to guard against the ringworm. In about 20 minutes, Halverson estimates, the ringworm kittens had been evacuated to safety. Employees began turning their attention to the dozens more cats and dogs in the shelter’s care. 

Just before 12:30 p.m., according to screenshots of Halverson’s phone records shared with MTFP, the shelter director began making calls about what was happening, including to local media stations and her board members. Halverson’s staff had reportedly experienced previous issues with smoke from the incinerator dating back to 2023 and been told by city staff that law enforcement agencies use the animal incinerator to dispose of “evidence,” including drugs. But at the time of the evacuation, the shelter director has since said, she had no idea that those burns might include “extremely dangerous narcotics.”  

After getting the animals to safety, Halverson began sending employees to the hospital to have their symptoms assessed. In the aftermath of the evacuation, Halverson said she’s been asked why she didn’t call 911 or the fire department. In her mind, she explained, what would have been the point of calling the city’s police department on its own animal control center?

“It’s so mind-twisting to be standing in front of someone in a police uniform, needing emergency help, and not get it,” Halverson said. “Who calls the cops on the cops?” 

At the hospital, health care workers began trying to find out what, exactly, the sickened shelter employees had been exposed to. City officials informed hospital staff that the burn, conducted at the request of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, contained 2 pounds of methamphetamine. No other substances were disclosed.

Halverson still frets that, as a haze of visible smoke hung in the air, the animals closest to the incineration area and her employees weren’t able to get out of the building faster. Part of the delay, she said, came from having to put on gloves and masks to avoid ringworm contamination. 

“I guess having known [what they were burning], I probably would have taken ringworm over meth,” Halverson said. “But we wouldn’t have left them in there. No one would have.”

As news of the burning malfunction spread through media reports — complete with images of shelter employees using oxygen tanks and hyperbaric chambers — many Montana residents were left questioning how law enforcement is supposed to get rid of methamphetamine and other illicit drugs. 

Methamphetamine is the drug most commonly seized by law enforcement, according to 2024 data from the Montana Board of Crime Control. Federal guidelines say the destruction of seized or forfeited drugs should be closely monitored and very thorough. That degree of disposal could happen in a commercial waste combustor, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The closest facility of that type is in Spokane, Washington, a nearly eight-hour drive from Billings.

The Billings animal incinerator operates under a permit issued by state officials from the Department of Environmental Quality. It prohibits the burning of anything other than animal carcasses unless an alternate burn is approved by DEQ. 

In recent statements, county public health officials at RiverStone Health said they are responsible for inspecting local incinerators and authorizing alternative burns. 

A RiverStone spokesperson said the health department had approved a request from the Billings Police Department, later published by news outlets, asking for the FBI to be able to use the incinerator to burn “illegal drugs.” The letter did not say what type of drugs the federal agency intended to burn or the quantity.  

In an email, a spokesperson for the FBI, Sandra Barker, said the agency and local law enforcement “routinely use outside facilities to conduct controlled drug evidence burns.” Barker declined to answer additional questions from MTFP about the event. 

According to the city’s incineration log reviewed by MTFP and interviews with city officials, law enforcement agents burned 188 pounds of unidentified materials that day in three loads beginning around 11 a.m. The last 48-pound installment, according to the log, was loaded at 12:30 p.m.

That timeline stunned Halverson, who had not previously heard about the city’s record.

“That means they were still loading it in after I had yelled at them and told them to stop,” Halverson said in a Thursday phone call with MTFP. “The more we put together, the more we realize that they really just didn’t care that they were hurting us.”

When Zinn, the former DEA special agent, vice chair of the Montana Republican Party and a Billings resident, first heard accounts of local residents being sickened by smoke from a drug burn, she said she was confused and concerned. No one — whether law enforcement or random bystanders — should be exposed to fumes from a drug incineration, particularly narcotics like methamphetamine, she said. While it’s not common for bystanders to become high from inhaling meth smoke, Zinn noted that the drug can include heavy metals and dangerous chemical compounds, depending on how it was made.

“Once you start burning inside, there is no way that those chemicals should be able to escape that contraption,” Zinn said.

Billings City Administrator Chris Kukulski told MTFP that the city is still working to understand what happened — a feat made more difficult by not having precise records of what was burned.

 “What they take from the feds is a sealed box,” Kukulski said in a Thursday phone interview. Nothing in the city’s files, he continued, shows whether that included “15 pipes, duffle bags,” or anything else.

A spokesperson for the state Department of Environmental Quality, Madison McGeffers, said records the agency has obtained so far indicate 188 pounds of drugs were burned by law enforcement that day, but gave no further information about the content of the disposal. The state department is investigating whether the burn was allowed under the city’s permit for animal incineration and whether the Sept. 10 situation violated the state’s Clean Air Act. 

If DEQ determines there was a violation of the permit or the Montana Clean Air Act, McGeffers said, the agency would issue a letter to the city’s animal control division. The local entity would then “be allowed an opportunity to respond to that letter.” 

“After assessing all of the information, including a response from the City of Billings Animal Control, DEQ would determine its intended path on the issue,” McGeffers said.

As of Thursday, remediators were still working to restore the Billings facility to full functionality. A sign on the shelter’s door said it was “closed until further notice.” 

Jacob Olness contributed reporting.