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."