Arnie is directly responsible for blocking the funding for the tanks for the C-130s and for not implementing all of the recommendations from the Cedar fire task force.

Part of the problem was the number of units still down from the Santa Barbara fire and the shift in units for the Malibu fire.

When the Orange County fire hit, everyone had already shifted north to cover for the units used in LA County.

You’re right though, the individual chiefs have a definite tendency not to share.

However, to be fair, there is a bit of blame-shifting going on with the locals here. The local fire departments are supposed to be part of a regional fire district. The regional fire district is supposed to coordinate multi-agency response to fires too big to handle with a single agency, as well as coordinate with the state. That did not happen here because the locals have all set up their own empires and don’t want to play nice with each other. What little coordination did happen at the regional fire district level was haphazard at best. That said, as with Governor Blanco’s response to the bus situation in New Orleans, the reaction of the state government was delayed far beyond the point it should have been — and unlike Blanco, Arnie didn’t have FEMA lying to him about imaginary resources that would be there Real Soon Now.