XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.republicans, talk.politics.guns

More incompetence by the hair gel governor.

'Gavin Newsom Shut Down a Volunteer Wildfire Response Force, Leaving LA Firefighters Shorthanded for 10 Days'

'Our people were already trained to do this,' former State Guard
commander says. 'They could have done a lot.''

<https://freebeacon.com/california/gavin-newsom-shut-down-a-volunteer-wildfire-response-force-leaving-la-firefighters-shorthanded-for-10-days/>

'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.

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.

The Guard’s freshly trained Type II handcrews arrived at Rose Bowl
Stadium in Los Angeles on Jan. 17, according to a now-deleted Facebook
post by the California Army National Guard. From there, the teams were
prepared to deploy on "multiple firefighting missions such as fuel and
debris removal, mop-up operations, and holding down fire lines among
other firefighting tasks," according to the Facebook post, which the
Free Beacon saved before it was deleted.



Coggan, the former State Guard commander who founded Team Blaze, said
the 10-day delay could have been avoided had his unit still existed.
Coggan said Team Blaze’s Type II handcrews could have been on the ground
in Los Angeles within hours of the initial outbreak working to quell the
flames and saving lives.

"Our people were already trained to do this," Coggan told the Free
Beacon. "They could have done a lot. Not only could they have responded quickly, they could have made the regular firefighters more mobile. They
could have brought water up to some of the houses and the hills. They
could have rescued people. There’s a lot they could have done."

Team Blaze had a track record of battling California wildfires before
the Newsom administration disbanded it. The unit responded to the 2021
Dixie Fire, which was the largest single-source wildfire in California
state history, burning nearly one million acres before it was contained.
Team Blaze also performed search-and-rescue missions during that fire,
the Sacramento Bee reported.

A senior enlisted leader in the California State Guard said the Guard
disbanded Team Blaze in January 2024 and transferred some of its
firefighters into Task Force Rattlesnake. During the transition, Team
Blaze had to return the five firefighting engines that it had received,
free of charge, from the California Office of Emergency Services, the
source said.

"The engines were given back to the state for no good reason," said the enlisted leader, who requested anonymity to speak candidly.

Team Blaze’s dismantling was first reported by the Daily Signal.

Team Blaze’s days were numbered after Newsom appointed Major General
Matt Beevers to serve as acting head of the California National Guard in
August 2022. Beevers was no fan of Coggan, who happened to be a Jewish
attorney as well as commander of the State Guard. Beevers allegedly
referred to Coggan as a "kike lawyer" during a private June 2022
conversation with his predecessor, Dave Baldwin, according to California Military Department Inspector General records obtained by the Free
Beacon.

Beevers also faces charges of anti-Semitism from former Brigadier
General Jeffrey Magram, an experienced commander credited with leading
the California Air National Guard’s response to some of the largest
wildfires in state history. Magram is suing Beevers, alleging he
orchestrated his firing in retaliation for Magram defending Coggan
during one of Beevers’s anti-Semitic rants, the Free Beacon reported.
Magram is also suing Newsom, who issued an order separating him from
state active duty in November 2022.

Beevers cut a critical line of funding for Team Blaze through a January
2023 ruling that prohibited the State Guard from accepting "gifts" from
the California State Guard Foundation, a charity run by Coggan that
provided firefighting equipment for the force and covered the training
costs for its volunteers.

Those "gifts" from Coggan’s charity include a $13,600 payment in
December 2022 to cover the cost to train Team Blaze firefighters to
operate its five firefighting engines, according to records obtained by
the Free Beacon.

To Beevers, these charitable "gifts" were illegal. Hill, the California National Guard spokesman, told the Free Beacon last year that the State
Guard, under Coggan, "had previously accepted funds illegally" from his charity. "This practice was stopped by Major General Beevers," Hill
said.

Beevers, in his January 2023 ruling, said Coggan’s charity could only
support the volunteers of the State Guard, and by extension Team Blaze,
if it conveyed its contributions through a separate fund under Beevers’s control. But not long after, the Beevers-controlled fund refused to
accept a $137,680 contribution from Coggan’s charity to finance a
scheduled training for members of Team Blaze and the State Guard.

The training was supposed to improve the Guard’s "ability to respond to
State emergencies," but had to be canceled after Beevers barred Coggan’s charity from financing the endeavor, the Free Beacon reported.

Hill, speaking on behalf of Newsom's office on Friday, told the Free
Beacon that the administration "does not regret" the moves it made in
2024 that left the California National Guard without a standby force of
Type II handcrews. Hill said Team Blaze was ineffective because it had
"little to no funding for equipment and maintenance," but did not
address the Newsom administration's ruling in January 2023 that deemed
it illegal for Team Blaze to accept charitable funds to pay for its
equipment and maintenance. Hill added that the administration's move to
assign the remnants of Team Blaze to serve as reserve detachment for
Task Force Rattlesnake was a "much more efficient use of government
resources"

Coggan said Beevers’s refusal to allow his charity to help cover
wildfire training costs for the volunteer soldiers under his command was
his breaking point. He retired as commander of the State Guard in May
2023.

"When he didn’t allow me to use the money, that meant I was done,"
Coggan said. "If the state had been behind this, I could have had 1,000 firefighters within a year ready to be out for the future. Easily.'

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