Firefighters struggle to contain Los Alamos blaze; more than 100,000 acres up in flames

By Friday, the Las Conchas fire in northern New Mexico had blackened 103,842 acres near the city of Los Alamos, which was evacuated Monday and remains shuttered to all but essential personnel.

Los Alamos County officials said no date has been set to allow the 12,000 residents of the city to return home and the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory said he has no firm date for reopening the facility, closed since Monday, which conducts classified nuclear weapons research.

Lab director Charlie McMillan said, "We will not reopen until the laboratory and our community are ready. We are hoping that will be soon, and so we're making recovery plans to get back to work sometime next week, with luck," McMillan said.

The pall of smoke from Las Conchas, the largest fire ever in New Mexico, has blanketed huge swaths of the north-central part of the state.The city of Albuquerque, 60 miles south of Los Alamos, issuedan air quality alert this morning. Firefighters have managed to contain only 3 percent of the blaze.

Wild land fire managers reported more than 1,000 firefighters are battling the Las Conchas fire, up 25 percent from 752 yesterday, with 52 fire engines, four bulldozers and nine helicopters assigned to the mission.