Gov. Gavin Newsom is likely watching his presidential ambitions burn to ash before his eyes. The liberal governor has been dealing with raging wildfires in Los Angeles County for weeks, which has become the costliest natural disaster in American history.
The reasons for the infernos burning uncontrollably are many, not least because the excesses of liberal governance hamstrung the first responders. The Los Angeles Fire Department got its budget slashed despite memos about how it could degrade responses to wildfires. The equipment was shoddy, there was no water in the Santa Ynez Reservoir, which was essential when the Palisades fire erupted, and the water systems had severe deficiencies, where upgrades were annotated dating back to 2013. Now, Mr. Newsom seems to be responsible for shutting down an elite volunteer firefighting unit which could’ve helped the National Guard combat the fires (via Washington Free Beacon):
@GovPressOffice why did the California National Guard delete this Facebook video? pic.twitter.com/2NyRzfsVMf
— Andrew Kerr (@AndrewKerrNC) January 24, 2025
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration shut down a highly trained, all-volunteer team of certified firefighters in early 2024—a move that rendered the California National Guard incapable of sending a complete firefighting force to Los Angeles until 10 days after the deadly fires broke out in the city, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
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Launched in 2020, Team Blaze was an on-call strike force staffed entirely with certified firefighters of the California State Guard, a volunteer militia force that reports directly to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Former State Guard commanding general Jay Coggan said its members attended regular trainings at their own expense, and an outside charity procured much of the team’s firefighting equipment at no cost to the state. California was obligated to pay Team Blaze only when the unit was activated to fight a wildfire, and by 2023 Coggan had plans to expand its ranks to 1,000 certified volunteer firefighters on standby all across the state.
But in January 2024, the Newsom administration disbanded Team Blaze after barring its charitable benefactor from providing free firefighting equipment to its volunteers. Team Blaze had to return its equipment to the state and many of its firefighters quit, while those that remained were transferred to support a separate state initiative called Task Force Rattlesnake, a senior enlisted leader in the California State Guard told the Free Beacon.
Task Force Rattlesnake is composed of "hotshot" Type I handcrews trained to carry out the most dangerous frontline wildfire duties. Rattlesnake deployed 14 of its Type I handcrews to Los Angeles after Newsom activated the National Guard to help quell the wildfires, California National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Brandon Hill told the Free Beacon. Hill disputed that Team Blaze was disbanded, saying the force was "incorporated" into Rattlesnake "as their reserve detachment."
Type I handcrews put out wildfires where they stand, but they count on the support of Type II handcrews working behind them to prevent the fires from spreading further. Team Blaze maintained a force of Type II handcrews, and when it was disbanded in early 2024, the California National Guard was left with no Type II handcrews on standby.
That meant Rattlesnake’s Type I handcrews had to battle the flames in Los Angeles for 10 days without the support of Type II handcrews from the California National Guard, because they didn’t exist when the fires broke out on Jan. 7. As flames engulfed the city, the Guard sent 200 soldiers to Camp Roberts—situated 220 miles north of the burning city—where they spent several days learning how to perform the duties of a Type II handcrew, Hill told the Free Beacon.
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Newsom’s office was not pleased with this report by the Beacon’s Andrew Kerr, but maybe if competent people ran things, we wouldn’t have had this catastrophe. The cuts to the budgets for emergency services were later spent on transgender bars, gay choirs, and a host of other niche lefty side projects that served little to no purpose other than massaging egos and making the most unhinged sects of the liberal base feel better about being weirdos. In the meantime, normal people would’ve liked their taxpayer money going towards things like the LAFD and other first responders since the city resides in an area where wildfires are common.
It took 10 days — 240 hours — for the Cal Guard to have Type II handcrews in Los Angeles supporting Rattlesnake’s Type I handcrews because they didn’t exist when the fires broke out.
— Andrew Kerr (@AndrewKerrNC) January 25, 2025
They had to be trained from scratch 220 miles north of the burning city at Camp Roberts. https://t.co/VlXiJelq9b
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