Fire departments make leaps with ISO ratings

March 08, 2015

Rejoice, Bartow County property owners. Evaluations of Bartow County and Cartersville fire departments released this week by the Insurance Service Organization mean lower insurance premiums. The two departments in October underwent re-evaluation under the agency’s Public Protection Classification Program, with both moving up two places.

“What they are is a private organization that basically comes and rates a community as far as their protective classes. Those classes are what are used in order to gauge what you are going to pay for your homeowner’s insurance or your business, commercial insurance for your property,” Bartow County Fire Chief Craig Millsap said.

The county agency gained two points on the ISO 10-point scale — originally a 5/8B, BCFD is now a 3/3Y. A property may vary in class based on the distance from a fire station or a recognized water source.

“Our original classification was a 5/9. They ended up changing that 9, which it’s scaled from 1 to 10, a 10 being you have no fire protection whatsoever, and a class 9 meant that you did not live within five road miles of the fire station ... and within a thousand foot of the water source to get that lowest rating your community qualifies for — at the time ours was a 5,” Millsap said. “So, if you were within five road miles of a fire station and lived within 1,000 feet of a fire hydrant, you got the best class, which was a 5. Then the 9 was you were within that five road miles but didn’t have the water source.

“As ISO changed a few years back ..., they realized we had capabilities to fight fire even if we don’t have the hydrant there. We have our operational ways of doing things, shuttling water. So they actually took the fire department’s suppression capabilities more into it; that’s where we came with the 8B, which is your fire department was good enough to get you a little extra credit.”

Cartersville Fire Department also moved up, now rating as a class 1 agency, the highest level attainable. Based on ISO statistics, they have evaluated 48,855 departments nationwide and Cartersville is among approximately 1 percent that received a Class 1 rating. Cartersville has maintained solid classifications over the years, moving to a Class 5 in 1976, Class 4 in 1981, Class 3 in 2004 and now Class 1, according to a city of Cartersville press release.

ISO took into account factors beyond the departments, all of which coordinate to provide public safety service. “In the last couple of years, ISO has changed the way they grade communities, and they go more along the lines of national standards for the National Fire Protection Association, so it’s more how the fire department operates, how we receive alarms, the water system in the community. So it’s really a community rating, not just a fire department rating. It’s how the community handles property loss as a whole, and now there’s also bonus points you can get for community risk reduction, which falls under, basically, here the fire marshal’s office, fire investigations, code enforcement and public safety education,” BCFD Deputy Chief of Operations Dwayne Jamison said.

Both agencies stressed the importance of implementing a strategic plan in improving their rating. “The biggest thing that helped us improve the rating was our strategic plan with the fire department because everything in our strategic plan was geared towards improving our operations along with the NFPA guidelines. So, as we improved our operations, it also helps us improve our ISO rating,” Jamison said. “ISO previously had their own training requirements that were separate from the national standards. By changing the whole way they grade you now, we’re training just on the national standards and not having to do something special just for ISO. ... We were able to get 100 percent of the points available for training just by doing that.”

“One of the things Dwayne mentioned a while ago about the fire marshal’s office, fire education, that was something we didn’t even have available the last time when we went through the ratings. They put more emphasis on that now, and wow, we already had it in place so that helped us out a lot also,” BCFD Deputy Chief of Administration Bryan Keeling added. “We’re now able to do testing of the fire hydrants to know how much water comes out of a particular hydrant, and if there are deficiencies, they can be fixed.”
CFD Chief Scott Carter also pointed to a plan — and the assistance of the city government.

“We began with a very strategic plan in 2009. The plan was to build on the successes of those before us and to efficiently target areas where we knew there were deficiencies in our service delivery. Through the support of our city administration, mayor and council, this new ISO classification became a reality,” Carter said in the release.

Carter also identified some of the key accomplishments completed since 2009 that contributed to the improved rating:
• Established a fire hydrant testing and maintenance program
• Established a hydrant identification program in compliance with NFPA
• Realigned emergency response territories and capabilities
• Added a fourth fire station with manpower
• Added a fourth fire engine

Improvements to the city infrastructure for water supply by:
• Establishing an emergency Etowah River Intake
• Rehabilitation of 12,000 plus feet water line on Tennessee Street
• Rehabilitation of 7,000 plus feet of water line on Etowah Drive
• Establishing a high pressure line between Center Road and Main Street
• Bringing a 3 million-gallon water tank on line at Center Road
• Adding to fire hydrant placements around the city.
• Establishing a joint fire training center on Paga Mine Road in 2009 with Bartow County
• Providing back up communications and circuit monitoring with Bartow 911
• Enhancing internal procedures, records processes, and vehicle/equipment maintenance programs.

Since the last review in 2005, BCFD has expanded and last year added new vehicles, including a T-Rex aerial unit, one of only 25 in North America.
“In addition to that, since our last rating was done, we’ve added more fire stations, we’ve added more personnel, we’ve added a lot of key things, a lot newer equipment, a lot more capabilities and things that we didn’t have in the past,” Millsap said.

The chief also pointed to practices in place that combine fire department forces. “Another thing that really helps us is the spirit of cooperation between us and the city of Cartersville Fire Department. Our automatic aid agreements played out a lot for both of our departments. By not being an island and having those territorial battles ... because let’s face it, if your house is on fire, you don’t care which fire department is coming. You want a big, red truck to show up that’s going to put that fire out. That’s just common sense,” Millsap said. “For us to have that spirit of cooperation, whether it be an automatic aid agreement, our joint training center, our joint HAZMAT team, all these things that we’re able to, by combining our resources of our two departments to provide better service to our citizens, also helped to provide a better ISO rating.”

The increased rating means savings for those serviced by both departments, although how much will depend on a number of factors. “It varies by the carrier, who they have their insurance with. It’s hard to tell. It depends a lot on the structure; it depends a lot on the property value. Here’s the thing we would run into for the past years ..., I’d probably get two or three calls a week where somebody’s insurance company now all of a sudden has made their rates escalate because they’ve changed their classification code. In this mobile age of GIS and all those things, you know, used to they took the agent’s word for it. Well, if the agent told them you were within five road miles of the fire station and within 1,000 feet of the fire hydrant, then you were a class 5 and they took their word for it. Now, they can type in your address and the address of my station and you’re 5.1 miles away — you now have a 10. That’s where it comes in. Sometimes some of the phone calls I got, their insurance premiums would double if not triple based on what they were paying. In some cases, their carrier dropped them altogether,” Millsap said. “They should see a reduction. We don’t exactly know how that is going to play out. We don’t know if that’s going to be an automatic thing that takes place, or if that is going to be something you are going to have to contact your agent about.”

Carter said the bigger impact may be on business growth. “While there is not a huge reduction in insurance premiums going from a 3 to a 1, there is major incentive to attract new industry and commercial growth,” he said. “When a prospect is looking at a community, they look at the ISO rating. From that they see how solid the public protection is and the commitment to protection. This is a major attraction that improves the local economy with solid investment.”

Fire department officials on both sides said the release of the ratings was a cause for celebration. “Oh, we’re elated! It was Christmas here the other day,” Keeling said.
“The entire department worked very hard for this, the guys doing the hose testing, doing the pre-fire planning, the training. Everything they do, that the crews put into this is tremendous. ... It wasn’t just a handful of people making this happen,” Jamison added.

Carter echoed Jamison’s sentiment. “This is a huge day for our organization and our city and none of this would have been possible if it was not for the support of our mayor and council, city leaders and of course the foundation of our organization, our people,” he said. “I have known that we had a first class group of men and women at Cartersville Fire, now I can simply say they are a Class 1 group.”

The citizens, without whom the department does not operate, was the focus of Millsap’s gratitude. “I want to thank the citizens of Bartow County for their support. Look at the [Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax] dollars that have been raised that went to projects for this department — new stations, new apparatus, all the things that we wouldn’t have been able to do, especially during this recession, if it hadn’t been for those SPLOST dollars,” he said.

Although re-evaluations will not be done for another five years, an ISO visit may be made earlier if the agency requests, with the new ratings taking effect this summer.
A formal presentation from ISO will take place on March 19 at 10 a.m., according to the city of Cartersville. At that time, a representative will discuss the evaluation that was conducted.

Article written by Jessica Loeding, The Daily Tribune News