Who is ISO® and why should I care? The Insurance Services Office® (ISO) is an independent company that rates every community in the United States for fire & emergency readiness. The ISO rating is then used to determine the insurance rates for the community that the fire department is responsible for. The communities are rated on items like manpower, equipment and training, water supply and communications. The fire department is the holder of this rating and by lowering their ISO ratings every fire department can in turn lower the cost of property insurance for their community.

Many cities and counties spend large amounts of taxpayer’s dollars to replace or update fire department equipment with the intentions of lowering their ISO ratings. They feel that replacement of their older equipment with newer technology will give them more credit during an ISO evaluation and thus lowering their rating. Is this the proper way to effect a change in your rating or can a positive change be made by better understanding what ISO expects from each department and use this knowledge to make changes that will have little or no cost to the taxpayers overall?

Can a city or county acquire a lower rating by understanding the ISO’s rating criteria and adjusting their current assets of vehicles, equipment, and manpower to more closely fit the requirements of the ISO rating schedule? Would this be a more cost effective tool than just the blanket spending of the taxpayer’s dollars on tools and equipment?

Understanding efficient ways to lower your ISO rating and the methods can be helpful in determining a more effective change for your community in general. NFSO (National Fire Services Office) follows ISO, NFPA, AWWA and OSHA requirements to better prepare a community to make more effective changes.

NFSO works for you and has been helping communities like yours since 1993, by providing proven information to the leadership and policy makers to make the most cost effective changes. Dealing with Public Safety Answering Positions (E911), fire apparatus and department needs, water systems and rural water delivery can be overwhelming.  NFSO has assisted over a hundred fire departments and communities a year to make cost effective changes and provide better services to their citizens.

Have you ever been told you could never have a better rating? Well if you are a Class 1 they are correct.

Have you ever been told counties can never score as good as a city? NFSO has helped rural volunteer fire services score ratings as low as Class 4/4 countywide. 

Here are just a few of the more common items covered in an ISO audit:

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1.     You are graded on how well you receive and handle fire alarms. How many PSAP operators do you have, compared to how many you need. The arrangement of the dispatch facility. How call notification are handled? What are the NFPA requirements?

2.     What is your needed fire flow? Who are you providing the service too?

3.     What are your response distances?

4.     How many pumpers you have compared to how many you need. How are they equipped compared to NFPA/ ISO’s equipment list? Do you have any reserve pumpers? Do you need them? How are they equipped?

5.     What’s the pump capacity of in-service and reserve pumpers as compared to your basic fire demand?

6.     Do you need an aerial truck? How is it equipped? Do you need a reserve aerial? How should it be equipped?

7.     Do you need service trucks? How should they be equipped?

8.     How much of your city/ county needs to be covered by pumpers and aerials?

9.     What is the number of personnel available for response for first alarm fires? How many do you need?

10.  How much training do you need in various areas? What facilities do you have for training and how much do you use the facilities?

11.  How much water is available in different locations of the city or county as compared to the needed fire flow for that area? What are the type and capacity of hydrants? How often are they inspected?

Who is ISO, and why do they show up at our doors every 10 to 15 years? The Insurance Service Office is a profit-making agency that performs community-grading audits in areas that have public fire protection and code enforcement.

ISO is the principle provider of insurance underwriting, rating and statistical information that is sold to the insurance industry. ISO also gathers information for many other reasons; they have divisions that also grade on how well you enforce building codes. They have personnel that travel around and measure buildings and report back on increased fire loads.

ISO maintains one of the largest databases in the world. “Every year they add over 1.2 billion records to their over 5.5 billion stored records. The data stored by ISO represents about 75% of the industries total premiums.”

The ISO score is the potential differences between fire departments and how well equipped they are to manage buildings once they are burning. The departments are rated on a scale of 1 through 10 with 1 being the best and 10 having little or no protection. The rating is set up to give credit for anything that the department has that helps in the fire suppression process. The local department starts out with 0 points and credit is given for anything that meets the criteria. All points are tallied and a final grade is given to the community.

Your fire department ISO rating can mean a great deal of money to the residents and business owners in your community and since most governments pay insurance you can also save even more money.

If you add these numbers up over a ten to twenty year period it adds up to a very large savings. The ISO grading is not a bad audit to go through if you totally understand what is required and why.

The lack of interest or understanding does a disservice to the community as a whole. It costs the business owners and citizens’ money on their insurance rates. The main issue is that the fire department loses the opportunity to make their department a better and more efficient one. If you plan right you can make many improvements to the fire department and not cost the citizens any money. If marketed right you can turn your improvements into something that the citizens will want to make happen because they will realize that they will be receiving not only better service but it will cost them less money.

By gaining community support for these changes you can make major improvements in the fire, dispatch, and water departments without a long term cost to the community. By lowering the communities ISO rating there will be a decrease in the insurance rates. This rate decrease should offset the costs of the improvements. Money that is saved on premiums stays and can help support your local economy.

The bottom line is that the departments being graded are improved and the community receives better fire protection.