Michael Karl McNeil: Fire Service Record
Michael Karl McNeil’s fire service ran twenty-five years, starting in 1989. The record below is set out by stage. Agency type and rank are given. Cities, stations and unit names are not, by his own standing choice.
Cadet, volunteer and reserve service
He started as a fire cadet in 1989. Through the 1990s he served local departments without pay while he trained. On 26 June 1995 a fire protection district selected him as a Reserve Fire Inspector after an oral interview and sent him to its two-day orientation academy. In 1997 he spent seven months as a volunteer in a city fire department’s prevention office, where the Fire Chief recorded that he researched inspections and fire plan checks and took part in inspections and tests of fire prevention equipment.
An undated letter from two city Fire Captains names him as a volunteer firefighter and one of their top responders by calls and by hours. A city government recognized his volunteer service on 6 May 2000 and again on 6 June 2002. A county Fire Captain’s letter of 8 June 2002 calls him a certified firefighter and crew leader who served as the volunteer company’s training officer.
State fire
He worked for a state fire agency, classification FF/CL. In May 2000 he was dispatched as a single resource and assigned as Initial Attack Incident Commander for two days. The written evaluation of that assignment is on the Incidents page.
Federal fire
Most of the career was federal fire, in fire prevention. He advanced from Fire Prevention Captain to Fire Battalion Chief, Prevention. Assignments took him across the United States, most often through the Western states, working under whichever state’s rules governed the ground.
The prevention post covered fire prevention program coordination, inspection and code compliance, and the unit’s hazardous materials program. Two Certificates of Merit from 2006 record that work. The justification letter behind one of them states that the hazardous materials cleanup and hazard communication work it rewards was outside his position description and additional to his fire prevention duties.
On incidents he held wildland qualifications under the National Wildfire Coordinating Group system, including Incident Commander Type 4, and was rated in that position in June 2007.
Final rank
Fire Battalion Chief, Prevention. On 16 June 2008 the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, United States Marine Corps, presented a Certificate of Appreciation to “Fire Prevention Battalion Chief Mike McNeil.” He is a former Fire Battalion Chief, and that is the wording used across this site.
What this page does not claim
Fire origin-and-cause investigation is not offered and is not part of his current practice. The service recorded here is prevention, inspection, hazardous materials and incident command.
More of the record: Home · Incidents · Training · Commendations · Today · Contact
