Gavin Newsom has had a brutal start to the year.
His problems are about to get a whole lot worse.
And one sick secret being exposed left Gavin Newsom’s political future on thin ice.
Gavin Newsom shutdown elite volunteer firefighter unit ahead of wildfires
The Los Angeles wildfires exposed the lack of planning and preparation by city and state officials.
California Governor Gavin Newsom was widely criticized for slashing $100 million for the state’s fire prevention budget in 2024.
Wildfires are the most common natural disaster in California, but Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) put their left-wing agenda ahead of firefighting.
The situation was much more dire than anyone realized.
Newsom disbanded a unit of volunteer certified firefighters called Team Blaze in early 2024.
Team Blaze was a part of the California State Guard and left Los Angeles shorthanded on firefighters to respond to the wildfires that were raging throughout the city.
The unit stood on call to assist in responding to fires throughout California until Newsom shut it down.
Former California State Guard Commanding General Jay Coggan said that members of Team Blaze trained at their own expense and had most of its equipment donated from an outside group at no expense to taxpayers.
California was so short on manpower that the state relied on prisoners to help fight the Los Angeles wildfires.
The only money the state had to spend on Team Blaze was when it was called up to fight a fire.
Coggan hoped to expand the unit to 1,000 firefighters to give California a resource to surge into bad fires.
Newsom stopped volunteer firefighters from receiving free equipment
Coggan ran the California State Guard Foundation, a charity that provided firefighting equipment to Team Blaze and covered the cost of training firefighters.
Newsom blocked Team Blaze from receiving donated equipment and eventually disbanded the unit in early 2024.
That decision turned out to be costly in the Los Angeles wildfires.
Team Blaze had firefighters who were trained as Type II handcrews who work to prevent the fire from spreading behind the Type I handcrews who are the frontlines fighting it.
The California State Guard had no trained Type II handcrews when the Los Angeles wildfires broke out.
Type II handcrews had to be trained for several days while the wildfires were spreading because the state had none to deploy to Los Angeles.
Coggan told the Washington Free Beacon that Team Blaze could have made a difference battling the wildfires.
“Our people were already trained to do this,” Coggan explained. “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 experience battling wildfires and performing search and rescue missions where the unit was praised for its work.
Newsom’s office claimed that it didn’t regret the decision to disband Team Blaze, which left the state without any Type II handcrews on standby duty.
The Los Angeles wildfires were made worse by the incompetence of Gavin Newsom and Democrat elected officials.
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