Bill Neville

Recent columns by Bill Neville

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Bill is one of "those" - a native "Californian". Raised in a construction family he worked in the building trades from age 12 until his late 20s when he decided to devote his full time to his fire service career. His building industry experience included brief stints as, laborer, hod-carrier, lather, plaster, carpenter, roofer, job coordinator, and bid coordinator.

Most of Bill's career experience has been associated with the fire service in southern and northern California as well as on the national scale. The first 24 years of Bill's fire service career was spent with the Los Angeles City Fire Department, advancing through the ranks from Fire Fighter to Assistant Chief. During his tenure with Los Angeles he was detailed at various times to the U.S. Department of Commerce-United States Fire Administration, and the U.S. Forest Service.

He retired from Los Angeles to accept the position of Fire Chief for the City of Hayward, California. After serving in Hayward for six years he accepted appointment as Superintendent of the United States National Fire Academy near Washington DC, subsequently moving to the Boston area to assume the position of Assistant Vice-President for Fire Service Affairs at the National Fire Protection Association. This Association creates nationally recognized fire safety standards for the fire protection and building industries.

Since 1991, he has provided consulting and expert witness services involving public agecies with populations ranging from 2500 to over a 1,000,000, from Boston to Honolulu and from Seattle to Miami-Dade. In 2006 he was elected (and re-elected in 2010) to the Penn Valley Fire Protection District Board of Directors.

Bill attended K-8 grades in South Los Angeles, 9-12 at Inglewood High School (as a classmate of the infamous Ron Cruger), has an AA degree from Harbor Community. College, a BA degree from California State University-Los Angeles and was the recipient of a Federal Emergency Management Administration Fellowship to the Harvard - Kennedy School State and Local Government Program.

He and his wife Barbara Brown-Neville, have 10 children, 23 grandchildren, and 3.66 great-grandchildren (number 4 due in the Summer of 2019).