Shifting winds have reduced the danger that fire will destroy more of Los Alamos, N.M., but Cortez residents are chipping in to aid in a recovery effort that is just beginning.

Stacey Axline, a Cortez resident, led the local charge by collecting money, water, blankets, non-perishable food, pet food, heaters, toys, baby supplies and other miscellaneous items which were shipped to Durango on Friday and then later on to New Mexico for Los Alamos residents who were evacuated from their homes.

"I have always lived in areas that were constantly in danger of fires, hurricanes, tornados — and there is nothing worse than having to be evacuated from your house," said Axline. "Something like (the Los Alamos fire) could happen anywhere and I just hope that they would get the same support too."

The week-old fire, which began as a prescribed burn to clear brush at Bandelier National Monument, had destroyed 260 homes by Friday afternoon, burned about 28,000 acres and forced 25,000 people to flee from around the city where the atomic bomb was built. The superintendent of the monument has been suspended with pay while an investigation is conducted.

Residents of Los Alamos were told that they could not return to their homes for at least a week, and many must face the fact that they have no home to return to.

Those leading the relief effort in Cortez and Montezuma County reported that hundreds of local residents had been donating food and other essential items all day Thursday and Friday.

Axline, along with a steady group of three volunteers, remained in the Front Row Seat parking lot along Main Street for several hours on Thursday and Friday in order to collect the goods from caring local citizens.

"We have had about 150 to 200 people make donations and have raised about $300 so far," Axline said, adding that the trailer truck that will be used to ship the provisions to Durango was loaned by Bill and Don Bridgewater of Bridgewater Trucking.

On Friday another Cortez resident, Tracy Russell, was attempting to get a second truck donated so that more emergency supplies could be collected.

Once again Bridgewater Trucking offered its services, Russell said Friday afternoon.

"The truck will be parked in the same spot from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday and from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Monday," Russell said.

Doug Blaine, an eighth grade science teacher at Cortez Middle School, said that an announcement went out over the loudspeaker late Friday afternoon asking all of the CMS students to do what they could to help the effort.

"The announcement went out late in the afternoon, though, when all the kids were leaving the school, so we may have to make the announcement again on Monday and then get the goods to Durango ourselves," Blaine said.

In Los Alamos, parts of the town resembled a war zone. Mounds of charred rubble and twisted metal were set against the backdrop of burned pines that framed the city. In one driveway, the fiberglass shell of a sports car had fused with the concrete. In another yard, a melted Big Wheel sat next to the seared remnants of a children’s playset.

In a Red Cross shelter at a high school in Santa Fe, anxious residents crowded around television sets, watching around-the-clock news footage to see whether their homes had survived. Others logged on to computers to scan a list of destroyed houses posted on the county web site .

Although the threat to Los Alamos had subsided by Friday afternoon, the fire remained out of control in the nearby forests and canyons.

"This fire is not over with and nobody here is pretending it is," Gov. Gary Johnson said.

The town, 70 miles north of Albuquerque, is essentially a company town for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which employs 7,000 people at buildings scattered throughout the city.

At the weapons lab, flames burned trailers and portable buildings and came within 300 yards of a plutonium storage facility. But lab officials insisted that dangerous materials were protected in facilities strong enough to withstand the crash of a 747.

By Friday, the danger to the lab appeared to have passed, and all of the facility’s major buildings were unscathed, said Richard Burick, deputy lab director for operations.