For construction experts watching the bribery scandal unfold at the Department of Building and Safety, there are nagging worries.

They picture sagging roofs, shaky foundations and faulty electrical wiring, all approved as building inspectors rubber-stamp projects in exchange for cash, and allow unsafe structures to rise around the city.

"There's supposed to be a code of ethics," says Bruce Miller, a former inspector with the Building and Safety Department who now runs his own land-use consulting company. "What if something happened?"

Two inspectors pleaded guilty in May to granting approvals at sites for duplexes and single-family homes in exchange for payment, according to the Federal Bureau of Intelligence. A third inspector, who worked out of the Van Nuys office and made more than $83,000 last year, was fired last month for allegedly soliciting bribes, said David Lara, spokesman for the Department of Building and Safety.

Another inspector retired in May after being placed on leave by the department amid questions of wrongdoing, according to Lara.

The investigation - which began at the department in January after an anonymous letter arrived at one of its divisions - now stretches from South L.A. to the Valley. Some in City Hall believe more arrests or dismissals lie ahead.

Given the ongoing FBI probe, Department of Building and Safety head Robert "Bud" Ovrom can't publicly name the addresses of the sites that were

But concerned about the potential for faulty inspections, the department is going back and re-inspecting sites that were under the supervision of the rogue inspectors.

Ovrom acknowledged that process has its limitations.

"If you are inspecting a foundation, and a building has been built on top of it, you can't see it anymore. If you're inspecting the electrical and the drywall has been put over the front of it ... you can't see it," he said. "To the extent that we can go back and re-inspect, we have. But we're not going to tear down a building."

In some cases, the contractors never got started. The two inspectors arrested earlier this year handed in checked-off cards on projects but were caught after officials visited the sites and found that construction hadn't yet started.

As for the scope of the investigation, Ovrom could only speak in generalities. "Single family homes, room additions are inherently more vulnerable," he said. "They're more vulnerable because it's a lone contractor with a lone inspector out on a lone site."

Joe Sandi, president of Sylmar-based Big Valley Roofing, a licensed contracting company, can outline the risks of improper work. "The electrical, you do it wrong and you could burn down a house," Sandi said. "Improper plumbing, you have health and environmental issues, like brown water. Improper framing, there's always the danger of collapse."

While Sandi said he's never seen instances of bribes exchanged, he has questioned some of the roofing jobs that building inspectors have signed off on.

"We've gone up on the roof, and seen things and been like, man, the inspector was never up here," Sandi said.

Gene Prowizor, president of Culver City-based AAa Building Inspection Service, which employs retired city inspectors, agreed that he has seen shoddy inspection work.

"Things that shouldn't be approved are being approved," Prowizor said.

Prowizor was interviewed three weeks ago by the FBI about the city agency, but he declined to say what he told the investigators.

But he said he lodged a complaint about a site in South Los Angeles in the late 1990s.

The South L.A. house had a damaged foundation and a cracked chimney, Prowizor said. Additionally, a washer and dryer sat on the lawn, an "electrocution waiting to happen," according to Prowizor. But despite the complaint, the inspector signed off on the paperwork, he said.

Prowizor said he called a supervisor at Building and Safety, but was told the inspector had political connections and couldn't be touched.

Meanwhile, the complaints about some employees at the department are familiar. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky heard gripes from developers during his time as a councilman in the 1980s.

"There were rampant rumors in City Council you could get a building inspector for $50 to sign off on something that shouldn't be approved," said Yaroslavsky, adding the complaints centered around work on houses. "Or you'd pay to expedite a project."

Miller, a former building inspector who left the department in 1986, remembers the headlines when a Van Nuys inspector was caught taking a bribe in exchange for granting approvals for a hair salon. Miller was not surprised to hear about more cases of bribery and he's still baffled by the risks taken by the corrupt inspectors.

"The inspectors make good money," said Miller. "I don't know why they would jeopardize their pensions."

According to Ovrom, contractors and developers are also being investigated. But as the probe widens, it's unclear if more arrests will satisfy an uneasy public.

At a city hearing on the scandal last week, City Councilman Paul Krekorian said that he's seen the consequences of poor building codes in other countries.

"We have seen buildings collapse that here would ride out the storm," he said. "We have seen people seriously injured or killed because of inadequate safety inspection."

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) ? A smattering of summer rain gave a boost to firefighters battling a huge forest fire near Los Alamos, giving authorities enough confidence to allow about 12,000 people to return home for the first time in nearly a week.

Residents rolled into town Sunday morning, honking their horns and waving to firefighters as the word got out that the roadblocks were lifted and the narrow two-lane highway cut into the side of a mesa leading to Los Alamos was open. They had fled en masse Monday as the fast-moving fire approached the city and its nuclear laboratory.

"Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" yelled Amy Riehl, an assistant manager at the Smith's grocery store, as she arrived in Los Alamos to help keep the store open for returning residents.

"It's scary, but all of the resources here this time, they were ready. They did a magnificent job," said Michael Shields, eyes tearing up as he returned home to his apartment in the heart of the town.

The town was last evacuated because of the 2000 Cerro Grande fire. That time, residents returned to a town that had lost 200 homes, several businesses and had to cope with damaged utilities and other county enterprises. This time around, residents were returning to a town that is completely intact, although the fire destroyed 63 homes west of town.

Although the threat to Los Alamos and the nation's premier nuclear research lab had passed, the mammoth wildfire raging in northern New

Hundreds of firefighters were working Sunday to contain the 189-square-mile fire as it burned through a canyon on the Santa Clara Pueblo reservation and threatened other pueblos on the Pajarito Plateau.

The area, a stretch of mesas that run more than 15 miles west of Santa Fe, N.M., includes Los Alamos and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Authorities said the fire, burning for eight days Sunday, has been fueled by an exceptionally dry season in the Southwest and erratic winds.

Crews have managed to keep the fire in Los Alamos Canyon several miles upslope from the federal laboratory, boosting confidence that it no longer posed an immediate threat to the facility or the nearby town. Crews were helped by rain Saturday afternoon that slowed the fire.

"Hopefully we'll get two to three more days like this and we'll be fine," operations chief Jayson Coil said.

The blaze, the largest ever in New Mexico, reached the Santa Clara Pueblo's watershed in the canyon this week, damaging the area that the tribe considers its birthplace and scorching 20 square miles of tribal forest. Fire operations chief Jerome Macdonald said it was within miles of the centuries-old Puye Cliff Dwellings, a national historic landmark.

Tribes were worried that cabins, pueblos and watersheds could be destroyed.

"We were also praying on our knees, we were asking the Creator in our cultural way to please forgive us, 'What have we done?'" Santa Clara Pueblo Gov. Walter Dasheno said. "Bring moisture so that the Mother Fire can be stopped. But that was not meant to be."

About 2,800 tribe members live in a dusty village nestled in New Mexico's high desert, near the mouth of Santa Clara Canyon where aspen and blue spruce forests provide relief from the dry desert and ponds provide water for irrigation. The canyon is north of the town of Los Alamos.

Pueblo Fire Chief Mel Tafoya said it was unclear whether cabins in the canyon or the ponds survived the blaze. Members of the state's congressional delegation have promised federal help for the tribe pending a damage assessment.

The tribe also worried that 1.5 million trees planted after the 2000 fire have been destroyed, as well as work to restore the Rio Grande cutthroat trout to the upper headwaters of the Santa Clara Creek. The tribe called for emergency federal relief.

To Santa Clara's south, Cochiti Pueblo was also worried about damage to ground cover affecting its watershed.

Archaeological sites at the northern end of the blaze at Bandelier National Monument hold great significance to area tribes. About half of the park has burned, Bandelier superintendent Jason Lott said.

Meanwhile, hundreds of lab employees were returning to prepare operations and thousands of experiments for the scientists and technicians who were forced to evacuate days ago. Among the work put on hold were experiments using two supercomputers and studies on extending the life of 1960s-era nuclear bombs.

Employees were checking filters in air handling systems to ensure they weren't affected by smoke and restarting computer systems shut down when the lab closed.

"Once we start operation phases for the laboratory, it will take about two days to bring everyone back and have the laboratory fully operational," Lab Director Charles McMillan said.

The blaze remained in Los Alamos Canyon, which runs past the old Manhattan Project site and a 1940s-era dump site of low-level radioactive waste, as well as the site of a nuclear reactor that was demolished in 2003.

Firefighters had planned to burn out areas near homes west of the town to remove combustible material and ensure the fire doesn't creep through an area burned in a 2000 blaze, but the rain kept the fire away, Coil said.

For returning Los Alamos residents Leo and Lorene Beckstead, their first stop was the grocery store to buy fruits, vegetables and milk as they prepared to heed officials' request that returning residents remain home because of the firefighters battling the blaze the continues to burn north, south, and west of the town.

"They did a great job," Leo Beckstead said of the firefighters. "I think because of the Cerro Grande fire, they learned a lot."

Shia LaBeouf's days of battling the Decepticons look to be over, with the Transformers star saying he has nothing more to offer after three films playing kid-next-door Sam Witwicky.

The 26-year-old American actor said he was through with the action-packed franchise.

"I'm done," he told The Associated Press at the recent opening of "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" at the Moscow International Film Festival. "I'm sure they will make more of them. It's still a very hot franchise."

He added "I love making them (the movies). I love the crew. I love Michael (Bay). I love the cast. I love Sam ... but I don't have anything new to contribute and I don't think there's anywhere to take Sam really."

LeBeouf's nerdy character helped one alien race of robots, the Transformers, overpower another race, the evil Decepticons, with Earth as the battleground.

Directed by Michael Bay, "Transformers 3" also stars Patrick Dempsey, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich and Victoria's Secret model Rosie Huntington- Whitely. Paramount Pictures said the movie earned $37.3 million Wednesday in the U.S. on its first day - a 40 percent drop from its predecessor, "Revenge of the Fallen."

LaBeouf explained Witwicky's role in the latest movie.

"Nobody really cares about Sam anymore. He has no purpose. He saved the world twice and has sort of been thrown to the side. This is a dude who used to validate himself on his involvement with these robots,

In addition to the Transformers series, the talented actor also starred in the 2010 film "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps," "Eagle Eye" in 2008 and "Disturbia" in 2007.

The Transformers trilogy was based on the cartoons of the 1980s that were themselves inspired by the Marvel Comics comic book of the same name.