Thomas J. Fee IAAI-CFI, CCAI-MCFI, Private Investigator
Current as of: January 1, 2021
ACQUIRED SPECIAL SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE POSSESSED IN THE FIELD OF CIVIL AND CRIMINAL TECHNICAL INVESTIGATIONS
I have been involved in the field of Fire, Fraud and Explosive investigations for over 55 years. I am retired from the Pomona Fire Department, where I proudly served over 28 years of service. I spent 2 years as a Firefighter, 2 years as a Fire Inspector, 12 years as a Fire Specialist Investigator, 9 years as a Captain Inspector/Investigator and my last three years as the Fire Chief of the Department. Prior to my retirement from the City of Pomona, I served as the Interim City Administrator for a period of eight months. I am a past president of the California Conference of Arson Investigators and of the International Association of Arson Investigators. Since my retirement from the City of Pomona in 1989, I have been licensed as a private investigator and have been conducting fire, fraud and explosive investigations.
I have testified as an expert witness in California Municipal and Superior Courts as well as in the United States Federal Court in Explosives and Fire Origin and Cause. I have met the qualifications of CFI through the State of California, State Fire Training, the International Association of Arson Investigators, the Pro-Board and the California Conference of Arson Investigators. Overall, considering depositions, various types of hearings and court testimony, I have testified in excess of an estimated approximate 800 times as an expert in my field of fire and bomb examination (45 plus years of testimony). I testified the first time as a count accepted expert in fire origin and cause in 1965. I have an extensive background handling both criminal and civil investigations. I have been involved in a considerable amount of insurance claim verification work. I have conducted fire origin and cause investigations in California, Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, South Dakota, Florida, Colorado, Iowa, and Texas and, as far away as, Germany and Australia.
I have conducted wildland/wildfire origin and cause investigations for forty five plus years ranging in size from a few acres to hundreds of thousands of acres. Below is a list of a portion of the wildland fires where I have been involved in the investigation since 2002. The dollar losses in some of these wildland fires ranged up into the billions of dollars.
Over the past forty five years, I have participated in hundreds of live burn drills. In many of those instances, I was involved as an instructor or coordinator and responsible for setting up and igniting the fires. During a redevelopment phase, in the City of Pomona, I set over one hundred fires within a two-year period. Each of those locations was studied both during and after the fires to advance my knowledge regarding fire behavior and fire investigation.
For years, I was a member of the California State Fire Training Advisory Curriculum Board for Arson Investigators and served as the chairman of the California Conference of Arson Investigators Education Committee. In that position, I participated in the development of the State Fire Training Curriculum for Fire and Arson Investigation Certification courses 1A, 1B, 2A and 2B. I was on the Board of Directors of the California Conference of Arson Investigators for twelve years, and continue to be active in that organization.
As a member of the California Fire Chief’s organization I was their representative for three years on the Governors Arson Task Force Committee.
I hold a lifetime California Teaching Credential and have taught classes at the College level in excess of twenty five years in the areas of Fire Suppression, Fire Prevention, Fire/Arson Investigation, Fire Death and Bomb Investigation. While employed by the Pomona Fire Department, I taught “Fire Cause and Origin” to firefighters at the Rio Hondo Fire Academy. I have taught at the following colleges; Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, Rio Hondo College in Whittier, Fresno City College in Fresno, California State Fire Training Academy in Sacramento, California State Fire Training Academy in West Covina and California State Fire Training Academy in Pacific Grove.
One of my assignments, while working for the city of Pomona, was supervising Pomona’s Code Enforcement Division. During that time, I gained valuable knowledge in municipal codes involving planning, zoning, building, electrical, mechanical, housing, water, health and etc. I was responsible for enforcement of State, County and local laws relating to all buildings used for public assembly purposes, carnivals and other public gatherings within the City of Pomona. I also supervised a division known as the Neighborhood Improvement through Code Enforcement (N.I.C.E.), a program which dealt with sub-standard buildings and conditions.
For six years, I provided Fire and Life Safety consultation services to the Los Angeles County Fair (Fairplex) in Pomona, California. The facility is used as a convention center and contracts with individual promoters for various types of events throughout the year. The facility is used in excess of fourteen hundred days each year for this type of activity. In addition, the Los Angeles County Fair sets up thousands of exhibits and booths each year during the month of September and hosts the largest County Fair in the United States. Attendance at the Fair, in September, each year usually exceeds 1.5 million people. The interim events at Fairplex draw an additional one million people each year. I have been very active in developing safety standards relating to traffic, crowd control, vender move-in/move-out procedures and general life safety throughout the grounds.
I developed an Emergency/Disaster Procedural Manual for Fairplex during my tenure with them and in 1988 I revised the entire Emergency/Disaster Manual for the City of Pomona.
I am a certified Fire Investigator per the standards set forth by; the California Conference of Arson Investigators, the International Association of Arson Investigators, the Pro-Board and NFPA 1033.