From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. The California wildfires had as of Thursday raged through nearly

150,000 acres claiming homes, businesses, and the lives of two firefighters. During a conflagration like this, there's one tool

in a firefighter's arsenal that makes great TV. Fighting the fire from the air choppers,

turboprops, even jets. One of the curiosities of this effort is a World War II flying boat that has been converted

for aerial firefighting. The plumes of smoke over Los Angeles so thick, aircraft dropping water,

fly in blind, unable to see the flames they're trying to extinguish. James Rainey writes the

on the media column at the Los Angeles Times. This week he wrote that often the

flame fighting planes seen in the sky amid the smoke are deployed more for the media spectacle

than they are for their actual utility. Yeah, they're really quite majestic. And if you've ever

lived through these wildfires, and I've lived through quite a few of them,

there's a feeling of a kind of powerlessness that comes over people.

And I think the site of one of these, in fact, in this fire we had even a 747 come in and do a couple of spectacular drops of retardant.

It's really quite a awe-inspiring thing to see because these pilots are very skilled, too,

and they'll swoop in much lower than you want to see a plane that big normally,

and they'll uncork maybe 20,000 gallons of this bright red retardant.

It's extremely telegenic.

So are you saying then that it helps relieve that feeling of powerlessness, that it's like,

you know, your classic deus ex machina? It absolutely does. And this is not to say that there's

no utility in it at all. I think all the fire professionals would agree

there is a time in place for the retardant, and then there are also water drops, which can be

quite effective in spots. But what happens in each one of these fires is as the anxiety level

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