Park Service official who approved blaze near Los Alamos to retire

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - The park superintendent who approved a prescribed burn that blew out of control and rolled through Los Alamos last month said Friday he will retire in July because of the controversy.

Roy Weaver, superintendent of Bandelier National Monument for nearly 10 years, has taken responsibility for the decision to start the burn on May 4. He said he believed conditions had been just right for the park's annual regimen of burning brush to stave off a potentially disastrous fire.

''I would approve a prescribed burn again,'' Weaver said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from his home in White Rock near Los Alamos. ''If I knew this would happen, I wouldn't. But we made the best decision we could with the information we had at the time.''

After the burn was started, the humidity didn't get as high as hoped and wind was higher than expected, gusting over 50 mph. It became the largest wildfire in state history, destroying more than 200 homes in Los Alamos and forcing 25,000 people to evacuate.

''I guess heartsick would be the best adjective,'' to describe how he felt after the fire, Weaver said. ''I was just feeling for those people, what they must be going through. I was worried about their property and keepsakes.''

Weaver was placed on paid administrative leave in mid-May, and a government report blamed Park Service officials for poor planning and several mistakes in carrying out the prescribed fire. He has not spoken to the media since he was placed on leave.

Weaver, 60, said he had planned to retire next April but was resigning now because of the fire.

''You wouldn't want to end it this way, that's for sure,'' said Weaver, a Park Service employee for 33 years. ''I have had a successful career overall. I have the respect from my co-workers and my staff. That's important to me.''

Rick Frost, a park service spokesman, said it would be up to the agency's board of inquiry if it wanted to pursue the possibility of any disciplinary measures against Weaver. Weaver said he has spent the last month preparing to appear before the board.

Weaver also said some of his friends lost their homes in the fire.

''Bless their hearts, they are still friends,'' he said. ''And when someone who lost their home says, 'Don't beat up yourself,' that really says something about the community,'' Weaver said.

Also Friday, officials said the fire might have caused $300 million in damage to the storied Los Alamos National Laboratory and even may have sidetracked some researchers' careers.

Six post-doctoral employees lost valuable information stored in computers that were in mobile buildings at the edge of the lab when the fire closed in. The lost research was part of a three-year fellowship for the workers that determines their career paths.

The lab's program director, Jim Holt, said the lab is trying to extend the fellowships to allow the employees to complete their work.

In all, the damage to the laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, is expected to exceed $300 million, Holt said.

About 8,000 acres of the lab property were burned. Officials said 39 temporary structures, including trailer and small storage units, were destroyed but no major structures were significantly damaged.

Meanwhile, an underground dump used in the early days of the lab remains ablaze. It's not clear how deep the fire is burning, said Lee McAtee, the lab's deputy director for environmental and health safety. There is no apparent public health threat, but the lingering fire does threaten workers in the area, he said.

State environment officials and activists say the dump probably has high explosives, depleted uranium, barium, beryllium and heavy metals dating back to the 1940s and 1950s.

A remote-controlled robot was sent in Wednesday to begin excavating the dump and dig out some of the burning material so the fire can be extinguished.