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ISO Considering Change, input wanted.
I’ve been invited to sit in on a discussion, along with several others, with ISO. Purpose here is to brain storm ideas for changes in their rating system. Since my brain is only partly cloudy today, I’ll entertain ideas from the members. Hear is your chance, I’ll pass along any good ideas.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by R Griffin on
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I agree 100%. Why don't they rate the building codes and construction types? Do they think a new constrution with glued trusses and osb board is the same as a 1970 constructed home. They need to realize room and content fires today can exeed the old 1000 degrees. Maybe the fire depts should get together and rate the insurance companies on pay out perfomance and response.( Fire Insurance Response Evaluation ) I bet not many would be below a 5. Let them work to prove themselves.... BE SAFE!
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Permalink Reply by Frosty on
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Not sure about where this is coming from, perhaps I am reading wrong.
One of the items to complete in a non hydranted area is a map showing water
supply points. From this your average times are figured for the water shuttle,
taking into account speed, access, and speed of dropping the water.
Your basic NFF is 250 gpm for two hours, but that is the minimum. As I am sure you know,
that figure will depend on your average building construction, size, etc.
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Permalink Reply by Trainer on
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Frosty; I’ll point out this test in a moment. I’m willing to stick my heck out a little, and try to explain the discrepancies displayed in this discussion . It’s more than likely the person representing ISO, not sure how they get there job, ours is a chief from another dept, but will guess it’s because he or she knows someone and not qualifications.
Now the rural improvement test; All we had to do to drop a class, from 9 to 8, again this is outside the city, was flow and thanks for the rates couldn’t remember, 250 gal a min for 2 hours, finished in 30min and was calculated to 60, from a water source at least 1 mile away. There were some other variables, tender time delay, for MA but that was pretty much it. We all though it was BS but dropping from 9 to 8 doesn’t make much difference in premiums.
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I think we are saying the same thing - ISO looks at time from available water supply for the shuttle.
The drop from a 9 to an 8 is a good drop, it averages 14%. I sure could use a 14% drop in my
rates.
RESIDENTIAL RATE CHART
Class Rate Savings Class Rate Savings
1 $1.41 0% 6 $2.81 -13%
2 $1.41 -26% 7 $3.22 -14%
3 $1.91 -14% 8 $3.73 -14%
4 $2.22 -5% 9 $4.27 -14%
5 $2.32 -7% 10 $4.81 0%
Totals $3.40 -341%
*add $.90 for small mercantile
Source: Dwelling table A from the Texas Department of Insurance Bulletin B-0028-00, 1 year base fire rate per $1,000.00 of coverage for a wood frame home
Once you get an 8 however, its usually pretty easy to drop that on down to a 7, or
even a 6. Often times it just requires making a brush truck into a service
truck by adding a little equipment that you may have even laying around the
department.
Then you start looking at a 40% or better rate reduction!
Another thing that has been real important for us, is as we reduce our ISO,
our measly budget increases. I have been not ashamed in the least to ask
a homeowner how much does the new station or new rating has saved him -
then I ask him for half of that for a couple of years. A few have written out
checks then and there.
When you cover nearly 200 square miles, two stations, on about 6k a year, (insurance
takes half of that!) you get pretty agressive about fund raising.
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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Frosty, There are two big secrets...
1) ISO will not tell any fire department or local government how changing from one class to another will affect their ISO rating. ISO defines their system as a trade secret. As a trade secret, it's immune from public disclosure rules and regulations.
2) ISO's refusal to publicize the insurance rates for commercial and residential property for a given municipality for each ISO Class makes figuring out if you want to go for a Class 3 or a Class 5 is worth it for the taxpayers. ISO essentially trades tax costs for fire insurance costs. If they won't give you one of the two key variables, then figuring out if an ISO Class improvement (or retrograde) is worth it to the taxpayers is, at best, a guessing game. That creates a huge uncertainty for local governments when they're trying to decide whether to spend the time, tax money, and effort to improve or maintain an ISO rating.
ISO has training demands that are impossible for busy departments to meet without compromising unit availability. I've worked for departments that are so busy that units were rarely available for 3 hours at a time for the required drills. These companies might be able to do 3 or 4 hours of training per shift in 1-hour increments, but ISO won't consider this as a company drill. If the same company does the exact same training in a 3-hour time block, voila, it's a company drill. ISO needs to change the training rating system from time-based training to performance-based training. After all, firefighting success isn't based on how long you spend training, it's the proficiency you build during the training.
ISO doesn't want anyone to have the information that it takes to figure out if ISO ratings are worth it or not. I wonder why that is?
Ben
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Permalink Reply by Art "ChiefReason" Goodrich on
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ISO should be two tiered: one tier for departments that maintain a full time department and one that is combination/volunteer. It is unfair to expect a volunteer department to hit a four minute response time of an urban department.
Training. Though I am a strong advocate for training, it is unreasonable to expect that a volunteer department will satisfy the same number of hours of training as a career department.
And my last bitch is that ISO does not give enough points for dispatch/communication systems.
They probably still think it's done with a crank siren.
I'll stop. Depending on who you get as an auditor, they can be helpful or they can be like a Japanese tourist.
TCSS.
Art
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If ISO based the ratings from records, they could just use the records from annual fire loss for each fire department. After all, actual fire losses are what the insurance companies pay for.
That way, we wouldn't need the detailed equipment lists, mandated training time blocks, ISO inspections/audits, and the resulting skewing our services toward property protection at the expense of life safety activities like EMS and non-fire rescue.
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I don't follow you on item 1. Changing from one class to another? I am dense - what kind of class are you talking about?
Item 2 is easy. ISO does not control those insurance rates, why/how could they publish them?
ISO simply provides the information to the insurance company (Even State Farm). What that individual company decides to do with it is up to them.
Your training issue? Its all in how you word the training on the records - yeah maybe it should not be that way, but like any organization that runs on paperwork, that is how it is. Been there - done that - got a bunch of Tshirts.
ISO Does publish some averages, which I already posted here.
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I fear this has the capabilty of becoming a paid/volunteer thread - but I will go for it and hopefully not insult anyone.
If a department constantly has a 4 minute response versus a department that has a 8 minute reponse, and all other things are equal, should that department that gets a 4 minute response NOT be rated higher?
Same thing with the training.
If the people of the community want to reap whatever benefits they may percieve from a paid department, such as lower response times and more training, then they should fund a paid department.
Dispatch? 10 points. Almost all departments above a 5 fail to get full points here, some on simple things like their phone book listings, some on more complicated things like having a supervised control line on their radio system. (Having been in the two way field for many years, I can assure you very few non-metropolition departments have had such)
But its a good point - and exactly the purpose of this thread for Trainer to take to his meeting.
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"Class" - ISO Class 1, 2, 3, etc. If you want to find out the relative tax cost vs. residential and commercial fire insurance costs for a Class 1, 2, 3, etc rating for your fire department, you simply can't get the information.
If ISO had no control over variations in insurance rates, there would be no point in their grading schedule or class system.
I have a basic ethical problem with pencil-whipping training records to gain ISO points. For those who are tempted to pencil-whip training records, it's too easy for someone to get response records through a Freedom of Information Act request and find out that Engine 38 was at a car fire and an EMS assist for half of the time that your records show they were at a company drill. Your own department's records can be used to show that you logged a company being two different places at the same time.
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Ok, your statement talked about how changing class affects their ISO rating - when both are the same thing.
ISO sells the insurors a product. Some insurors take the ISO rating as the only thing affecting the rates, while others simply use the ISO rating as one of many things affecting their rates.
State Farm is a good example. While they have a completely different rating schedule, and they state they no longer rely on ISO, they still buy ISO data products for part of the information in coming up with their rating schedule.
Then you add to it the fact many companies are using credit history, past loss,
and other things to the pricing of their insurance, This makes it impossible for ISO to keep track of different companies rates.
And for the record, I NEVER said you should pencil whip your training records. NEVER.
I can't stress enough, NEVER. Nor would I ever do it. Seems to me insurance fraud
would be the criminal charge they would use.
What I did say is document it properly. Word it right. Instead of putting down three
different instances of company drill in hose evolutons, put down 1 hour of company drill three times with different phases of hose evoluton.
I know for a fact this works.
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Interesting on the training documentation - the last set of ISO recommendations I'm looking at say that you have to document a minimum of 3-hours per company, multicompany, or night drill, period. Running the exact same drills in 3 one-hour slots equals "no company drill".
That's per two recent ISO evaulations I saw of very similar departments.
So...if you're engines are running calls avery 2.5 hours, explain how you're going to get compliance with the 3-hour drill block rule and not pencilwhip the paperwork?
If your method works for you and it doesn't work for the departments whose ISO recommendations I saw, that means that ISO is being VERY inconsistent in how they apply the rating schedule. If that's the case, it's not a big confidence builder.
All of this is hair-splitting compared to the fact that ISO ignores everyday realities of the modern fire service, skews all-hazard services away from life safety and toward property protection, and requires wasted money and compartment space on archaic equipment. (hose jackets)
More importantly, ISO ratings ignore the two most critical factors in local fire protection;
1) Non-fire department fire protection systems, and even more important,
2) Actual community fire loss. THAT is what affects the insurance company's bottom line, not whether I do training in 3 one-hour drill blocks or a single three-hour drill block, or whether we carry hose jackets for a hose diameter we rarely use.
June 18, 2007 is glaring evidence that the ISO ratings system is flawed.
Ben
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