State regulators Wednesday suspended the storage permit for the Apex warehouse that exploded but said they were not questioning the wisdom of storing hazardous waste in the middle of suburban Wake County.

"It may sound that way," said Cathy Akroyd, spokeswoman for the Division of Waste Management. "But really and truly, the purpose is to clarify that they are not to receive any new waste on their site."

Akroyd said the state regulators have not yet rethought their 2005 decision to let the owner of the warehouse, EQ Industrial Services, store hazardous waste on Apex's Investment Boulevard until 2015. They are waiting for an explanation of the fire's causes and its environmental effects, she said.

"We're taking it one step at a time," Akroyd said.

Still, Apex Mayor Keith Weatherly said it marked another step toward EQ's expulsion from town. Last week, Weatherly and the Town Council vowed to do everything in their power to keep the company from rebuilding its hazardous waste depot.

"We assume all the operations at this facility will be finished once they complete cleanup," he said.

EQ spokesman Sean Graham said the company has not decided whether it will try to rebuild.

Before EQ can even begin to think about reconstruction, the company will have to complete an increasingly complicated cleanup effort.

U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle stopped cleanup Wednesday so representatives of four Apex residents suing EQ can examine and sample the chemical remnants of the fire.

Graham said that Boyle's stop-work order came after workers had boxed up and carted away most of the debris. However, some boxes filled with waste remain on site.

That made Weatherly worry. The Apex mayor called the order "unfortunate" and said the town might ask Boyle to reconsider.

"Until that material is out of our town," he said, "there will still be safety threats."

The warehouse was a hub for hazardous waste haulers for 19 years. Much has changed since its 1987 opening. Its dead-end street at the edge of town became a suburban back road lined by two children's gyms, a church and a YMCA. Hundreds of homes sprouted within a mile.

Before the fire

Amid the growth, local and state regulators did not question the warehouse's location when EQ's hazardous waste storage permit came up for renewal a couple of years ago, according to state records. Nobody fretted about workers stacking cans of trashed paint, barrels of toxic heavy metal and drums of lab chemicals a few hundred feet from new townhouses.

"We don't go out there and start driving around within a 10-mile radius to see what's there," Doug Holyfield, head of the Division of Waste Management's Hazardous Waste Compliance Branch, said Tuesday.

After the fire, town officials were quick to say that EQ no longer belonged in Apex.

State regulators, meanwhile, have been more reluctant to make such sweeping statements.

They preferred instead to stick to specific, noncontroversial orders like the one Wednesday suspending EQ's hazardous waste storage permit. Not even EQ could complain about it: The warehouse required to store the hazardous waste blew up.