As wildfires rage across Texas, feds take control and scuttle volunteer firefighters
Wednesday, September 07, 2011

As fires raged across central Texas for the past three days, local citizens sprang into action to protect their lives and property. Local churches opened their doors and began hosting refugees left homeless by the fires which have now destroyed more than 1,000 homes and 100,000 acres across the state in just the past week. Several branches of the YMCA also began hosting families with children, and a public school in Bastrop County opened its doors to serve as an emergency relief center.

Federal agencies seize control on Tuesday
Hundreds of firefighters from all the surrounding counties worked two days and nights in a heroic effort to contain the fires, but high winds Sunday night and all day Monday thwarted their efforts. So the call went out for more volunteer firefighters to join the effort from across the state.

Before they arrived, however, the federal government showed up and claimed it was in charge of the situation. "Agents with the federal National Interagency Fire Center, a coalition of federal agencies including the U.S. Forest Service, assumed command of firefighting efforts Tuesday afternoon," reports The Gonzales Cannon (http://www.gonzalescannon.com/node/6411).

RealNewsReporter.com is now reporting that volunteer firefighters who had in some cases driven all night to reach Bastrop county were turned away by the feds, who claimed that since local officials never made a "formal request" for volunteers, the volunteers could not be "activated."

So while Bastrop County burns from 40+ fires that are still raging, the federal government is actually telling volunteer firefighters to go home.

snip

Perry did confirm that Texas "would seek federal disaster relief and that state officials were considering seeking military resources from Fort Hood," reports The Gonzales Cannon (http://www.gonzalescannon.com/node/6411).

(Military resources? What kind of military resources? I found it odd yesterday to personally witness what looked like U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopters taking off and landing near the Tahitian Village fires in Bastrop. Does the U.S. military have constitutional authority to take part in firefighting operations on U.S. soil? Clearly, some military transport planes could be very useful right now, but we always have to be careful how much control we hand over to the military in these domestic situations... never forget posse comitatus!)

snip

As Rep. Ron Paul has rightly pointed out during numerous interviews, "FEMA to the rescue" isn't always a good thing.

snip

• Rumor report: A DC-10 aircraft that has been retrofitted for firefighting has arrived in Bastrop County, according to reports on a Central Texas news radio station, but the plane will not be operational until Friday because of mandatory government "down time" restrictions on the flight crew. (Gee, is there nobody else who can fly a DC-10 in Texas? There were thousands of these planes in commercial operation over the past three decades... surely somebody can fly this hunk of steel, despite the fact that the hydraulics have no redundancy!)

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/033517_Texas ... z1XH6u1eYp


I'm NOT saying this is the case, but can anyone think of a reason why the gov't would want Texas to burn? Or are they taking advantage of a crisis ("Don't let any crisis go to waste.") as another opportunity to get people used to the federal government and the military taking over in a crisis?