A long-awaited improvement in a fire rating for those living in the Mid-Columbia Fire & Rescue district will mean lower insurance costs, said Fire Chief Bob Palmer.
The ISO rating is created by the Insurance Service Office, an organization that provides information on risk. The ISO ratings are used by insurance companies to set the price of policies.
The ISO rates the fire district every 10 years, and in 2008, its rating was downgraded, meaning insurance rates within the district went up.
But the newest rating is an improvement. “Overall, the good news is that we improved our score,” Palmer said. And what it does, you look at a large part of our district now has fallen into the category of a 3. It certainly improves things tremendously.”
Properties falling within five miles of a fire station are upgraded to a 3 rating, he said. ISO rates from 10 to 1, with 1 being best.
The district overall was downgraded from a 4 to a 5 in the 2008 ratings.
The less populated areas of the district fall into a 10, which is the least desirable rating, “But we certainly improved the major, more populated areas of the district, so that’s a really huge plus.”
MCF&R just inked an automatic aid agreement with Mosier Volunteer Fire District. Before, it was on request only. The change to automatic aid has improved the rating for residents between Mosier and The Dalles, he said.
Significant swaths of the area improved from a weak score of 9 to a strong score of 3, he said.
In town, properties around the two fire stations, the main one at 1400 W. 8th street and the satellite station in Columbia View Heights, commercial properties saw their ratings improve from a 5 to a 3.
“My understanding is that for each point, you gain between a 5 and 10 percent reduction in your premium for each point you drop,” Palmer said.
When the area in the city was downgraded from a 4 to a 5 in 2008, the city and county governments said their insurance went up by 10 percent, Palmer said, “so they should at least drop by 10 percent, maybe more, because [their score improved by] two points.”
The area up Sevenmile Hill and east of the main fire station were previously 9s or 10s, the worst possible score. They are now at 3, meaning an improvement of six to seven points. “So that’s a really good potential savings in insurance for these people.”
He encouraged people to notify their insurer that their ISO rating has changed.
Some areas remain at the worst possible rating of a 10, but Palmer said those areas have a low population base.
The fire district improved its rating by opening a second manned fire station in Columbia View Heights.
Another change that helped the fire district was that ISO “incorporated our ability to supply water through tender supply,” Palmer said.
That is a mobile water supply, he said.
“We were able to show that our alternative water supply procedures were able to meet the fire flow requirements that they required for the properties that they select as a test site,” he said.
“They factor in the amount of tenders we have and what the resource available is, and they determine a fire flow based on that,” he said. Available resources also include tenders in Dallesport, Hood River and Mosier.
The fire district also got better scores for emergency communications, which is the Wasco County 911 Communication Center.
He said dispatch center got the maximum credit for telecommunicators, but they still have improvement potential for dispatch circuits, “which is more of a technology thing,” Palmer said. Emergency communications received seven of the 10 credits available.
The fire district itself was marked down for not having a reserve ladder truck. “Very few of the small agencies have a reserve ladder, if any,” Palmer said.
The fire district wasn’t awarded full points for a “deployment analysis,” but improving that score would mean adding personnel and fire stations, which the district doesn’t have the money to do.
He said the district was at the point where, if it wanted to improve its ratings any more, it would have to add staff and stations.
The district also got the maximum points for its standard operational procedures and incident management, which is “an evaluation of our procedures relative to responding to a structure fire.”
The ISO rating looks at three areas: the fire district itself, the communications center, and the water supply. Forty percent of the score is based on water supply, 50 percent on the fire district itself, and 10 percent on emergency communications.
“You can have the best water supply in the world but if you’ve got deficiencies on the fire side,” they are negated, Palmer said.
When ISO looks at staffing a fire, it rates three volunteers as equal to one paid firefighter. The fire district is trying to beef up its volunteer corps again, and has hired a grant-funded position to work on it.
And the only reason a volunteer is rated lower than paid is because of the chance that they might not be able to respond immediately to a fire, like paid staff would.
If a volunteer was at the station and responded along with paid staff to the fire, that volunteer would count as fully as paid staff, Palmer said.
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