The former chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown, said the Bush Administration has not recognized how much of a “problem” it has with disaster response, such as dealing with the massive fires in Southern California, since so many National Guard troops are overseas in war zones. "The White House needs to recognize that we are overstretched," Brown told ABC 7/NewsChannel 8 reporter Rebecca Cooper in an exclusive interview Wednesday. "They need to increase the size of the regular Army and stop relying so much on the National Guard."

Brown said another problem is that "some of these guys are home from National Guard duty in Iraq for literally 5 hours before they have to turn around and respond to something here, and that's not good."

On Tuesday Senator Barbara Boxer complained on Capitol Hill that California's National Guard has been compromised because too much of its equipment and personnel are committed in Iraq.

In response to Boxer's comments, Brown said, "FEMA's job is to pick up the phone and call another Governor and say 'Hey California is short on National Guard, can you spare a few?' but you can call any Governor in the country and everybody is stretched."

Orange County Fire Chief Chip Prather recently told reporters that firefighters' lives were threatened because too few crews were on the ground. He said a quick deployment of aircraft could have corralled a massive blaze near Irvine.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dismissed the comments stating "we could have all the planes in the world here - we have 90 aircraft here and six that we got especially from the federal government - and they can't fly because of the wind situation."

Brown’s successor as FEMA chief, R. David Paulison, defended the National Guard’s strength when asked about it Wednesday morning said there were during a series of television interviews that there are “plenty of Guardspeople” available.

Officials say the devastating wildfires in Southern California have caused at least $1 billion in damage in San Diego County alone.

California authorities and FBI agents searched a home Wednesday as part of an arson investigation into one of the wildfires in Orange County.


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For more information from the Politico: Brownie: Bush not doing heckuva job on fires