This is on the media. I'm Bob Garfield.

Paradise Lost. Fire officials and residents describe a scene of mass devastation with reports of hundreds of structures going up in flames.

This fire started northeast of Paradise and quickly burned right through the city of about 27,000 people.

The fires have forced tens of thousands of people to leave their homes.

Some abandoned their vehicles on gridlock roads and ran from the fast-moving flames.

The so-called camp fire that ripped through the city of Paradise, California, this weekend,

has killed 43 people, and as of this writing, 200 remain missing. The fire has already burned

125,000 acres, and is only 30% contained. Meanwhile, the Woolsey Fire, which started out Thursday

west of Los Angeles and has destroyed areas of Malibu, is still being fed by strong winds.

According to the National Interagency Fire Center,

7,578 wildfires have burned a million and a half acres of California already this year.

The conflagrations have made familiar landscapes alien to us. But one thing in these fiery times remains unchanged, presidential politicking via Twitter.

He wrote, there is no reason for these massive, deadly forest fires in California,

except that force management is so poor.

He accuses officials of mismanaging the force and adds, quote,

remedy now or no more fed payments. One of the things about fire is that it is very often used to

animate some other message. Stephen J. Pine is a former firefighter, self-described pyromantic,

and author of 25 books on wildland fires.

We spoke to him in August of this year when wildfires were also raging, not only in California,

but in Europe as well.

If you've got a theme, a topic, something you want to promote, if you can put a picture or footage of fire, you're going

to get attention.

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