Police called on the Anderson County Sheriff Department's SWAT team to help execute a search warrant Tuesday at the home of James Robbins because they believed the home might have been booby-trapped. Authorities also had received tips and heard rumors that Robbins was cooking methamphetamine in his house.
The officers used a ram to break open the front door and were immediately greeted by intense flames coming from the living room.
They took Robbins into custody and fled out of the back door because of the fire, Oliver Springs Police Chief Kenneth Morgan said.
``In less than a minute, the fire was out the front window and through the roof. I've never seen anything burn that quick and that hot,'' he said.
Authorities were searching the smoldering remains of the house on Wednesday to determine what sparked the fire.
Members of the Anderson County Meth Task Force found plastic garbage bags in a ditch containing matchbooks with the match heads removed, empty iodine bottles and empty gallon jugs of muriatic acid, which all are used to make meth, Morgan said.
Robbins, 52, was being held in the Anderson County Jail on an old warrant for failure to appear on a bad-check charge.
