Efforts to contain the Las Conchas Fire appear to be turning a corner as firefighters enter the seventh day of attacking what is now the largest wildfire recorded in New Mexico.

The fire by Friday had scorched more than 104,000 acres in forests and canyons west of Los Alamos, officials said, stretching north of Santa Clara Pueblo and pushing south onto Cochiti Pueblo.

But as the fire moved closer to defensive lines cut this week and to areas already denuded by fires in recent years, the conflagration was aligned to hit a barrier that should mitigate further movement north, said Jerome MacDonald, operations section chief for one of the fire's incident management teams.

"We've got a window of opportunity with a change in the weather and position of the fires and the fuels to get out ahead of it," he said at a midday briefing, noting a "minuscule amount" of rainfall also has helped.

The fire remained at about 4 percent containment late Friday. MacDonald said containment figures should grow each day for the next couple of weeks.

Los Alamos National Laboratory, which along with the evacuated community of Los Alamos has been spared from damage during the weeklong fire, on Friday declared an end to its state of emergency and moved into what it called "operational recovery mode."

The change in status allows firefighting resources assigned to the lab to be relocated elsewhere in the region, LANL Director Charlie McMillan said in a statement.

"At no time were nuclear or hazardous materials in harm's way," the statement said, "thanks to immediate and effective action taken by fire and emergency crews, apart from safeguards in place before the conflagration."

Thousands of employees of Los Alamos National Laboratory, a major Northern New Mexico employer, still are awaiting word on whether the lab might resume operations next week. However, no date has been given.

The town of Los Alamos, which is still under heavy smoke cover, has been evacuated since Monday. Evacuees aren't likely to get much advance notice before they are welcomed home, Los Alamos Police Chief Wayne Torpy said.

"As soon as we have word that it's safe to bring you home, we will get that out on every available outlet," he said to displaced residents, many of whom are staying in hotels, private homes or shelters in the area.

Los Alamos County on Friday said it had recalled about 100 "essential" employees to help begin preparing to reopen the community. Staff members at a recovery operations center at Mesa Public Library are focusing on what steps must be taken by the local government and the lab.

"With the fire moving further north and no longer threatening the lab or most of the community, both entities are beginning to gear up now for reopening operations," a county statement said Friday.

A major consideration, the statement said, is the reopening of the Los Alamos Medical Center. The hospital remains closed with only a basic "triage" type of service within its emergency room, the county statement said.

Santa Clara Pueblo Gov. Walter Dasheno and other pueblo personnel got an aerial view of fire lines Friday via helicopter in order to evaluate the fire damage and potential risk to structures and significant cultural sites.

Although at least 6,000 acres of Santa Clara's watershed and other sites had burned by Thursday night, MacDonald said that by Friday the hot edge of the moving fire had spread north off Santa Clara land.

The blaze was not imminently threatening any Santa Clara homes and burned no closer than 6 miles to Puye Cliff Dwellings, said Joe Baca, the pueblo's public information officer.

Unpredictable winds remain the biggest worry, said Baca, who noted that although the fire moved mostly north on Thursday, it shifted eastward that night.

U.S. Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall and U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Luján met with pueblo leaders at both Santa Clara and Cochiti on Friday and vowed to seek federal funding assistance for restoration efforts.

The fire also stayed more or less in check along its southern perimeter, where crews performed a back burn using aerial ignition techniques Friday afternoon to keep the blaze from moving higher onto Bear Mountain.

"On the southwest flank, lots of line has been cut and is holding," said Rod Torrez, a fire information officer in the Jemez Springs area. "That is good news."

Although calm winds meant smoke settled in Española, Santa Fe, Rio Rancho and Albuquerque, for those on the front lines, fewer gusts also aided in efforts to rein in the fire, he said.

MacDonald said Friday that more than 1,200 firefighters were working on the various fronts of the fire, including about 800 in the north zone and about 400 in the south.

Officials in the north zone, where the Santa Fe Hotshots and other elite wildland firefighters are headquartered, began the process of moving their base camp from N.M. 4 to Española Middle School.

Local and visiting fire crews who had been protecting structures at Bandelier National Monument since Sunday fell back to the new base camp Friday night after danger passed at the national monument site.

Santa Fe Fire Department Capt. Wayne Mueller and three other city firefighters who took one of the department's structure teams to Bandelier, for example, were headed home after a debriefing.

"We get to sleep in our own beds tonight," Mueller said. "We have not showered in days."

A three-man crew from Bloomfield also was taking a break after a few days at the monument. They didn't see much fire at Bandelier, only smoke, said crew leader Travis Olbert. The crew did get daily visits from a brown bear cub.

"The ranger said he had been displaced by the fire a little," he said.

Firefighting crews, including the Hotshots, already have arrived from Arizona, Montana, Utah and Washington state, and more are pouring in to provide resources for what Gov. Susana Martinez described as the nation's No. 1 fire priority.

Jim Miller, 59, and his son, Dusty, 27, are timber fellers from Nevada City, Calif., who were hired to help with the fire as independent contractors.

They camped in tents outside the middle school Friday evening after driving for two days straight. They expected to haul their 35-pound, 44-inch chain saws into the fire area this morning to take down large trees gutted by flames.

"Logging has just about disintegrated," Jim Miller said as he sat outside his tent. "There's hardly any more logging, so we have to do these fires."

Before Las Conchas, the largest fire recorded in the state was in 2003, when about 94,580 acres burned in the Gila National Forest. The Cerro Grande Fire in the Jemez Mountains in 2000 burned more than 40,000 acres after a prescribed burn got out of control and blazed through part of Los Alamos.

Officials say the Las Conchas Fire likely started when a tree limb hit a power line on private property near mile marker 35 on N.M. 4.

Contact Julie Ann Grimm at 986-3017 or jgrimm@sfnewmexican.com.