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The Las Conchas wildfire in New Mexico has entered its 6th day today, with over 1200 workers battling to bring it under control. So far, it is only 3% contained. It has burned across 93,600 acres since Sunday, including 6,000 acres of Indian reservation, and is poised to become the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s history. Thousands of Los Alamos city residents heeded a mandatory evacuation warning on Monday and remain displaced from homes threatened by the mammoth blaze. However, overshadowing all other potential dangers is the possibility of a nuclear calamity at the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory should the fire overtake the 36-sqaure mile facility. Lab officials assert that all hazardous and nuclear materials, including 3 metric tons of highly radioactive weapons-grade plutonium, is protected, contained in concrete steel vaults. Not all experts on the subject agree. Glenn Walp, author of “Implosion at Los Alamos” told ABC news earlier this week that 20,000 barrels of nuclear waste material are stored on the site, and are at risk if the fire reaches the Lab. This is only the latest of super-sized wildfires to burn for days in the West. In Arizona, Reuters reports that the Wallow Fire has charred over half a million acres since May 29th, and continues to burn. Wildfires in Texas this spring have claimed at least 4,300 miles. Writing for Tom Dispatch, Chip Ward calls these unmanageable fires a consequence of climate change and the unbridled expansion into, and abuse of, the West. Ward writes that just as frontiersmen, motivated by notions of a “Manifest Destiny,” won the West, the West is now “ours to lose.”

GUEST: Chip Ward, is a political activist and author of “Canaries on the Rim” and “Hope’s Horizon”. He joins us from Torrey, Utah.

Read Chip Ward’s article on Tom Dispatch here: http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175405/