Fire Department en route to lower insurance premiums

Mar 29, 2007

Fire Chief David Jonker said an initiative the Fire Company has embarked upon could produce a 20 percent reduction in insurance premiums for residents, if goals are achieved.

Every 15 years, the Insurance Services Office, or ISO, rates the fire protection capabilities of more than 34,000 fire departments in the United States.
The one-to-10 scale-based ratings system, with one being the best, is the primary factor in setting fire insurance premiums for both residential and commercial structures.

Using the National Fire Protection (NFPA) standards, ISO evaluates three categories — the fire department, water supply and communications, studying areas such as personnel, training, record keeping and equipment.

With improvements in these areas — including the acquisition of a new tanker in May and other items budgeted over the next few years — the goal is to reduce ratings in areas equipped with hydrants from a six to a three, and in areas without hydrants from a nine to a six.

Each part of town will be addressed in phases, according to varying ISO requirements.

Chief Jonker said he hopes to have ISO visit after Labor Day for a department evaluation.

Water

“From an ISO perspective, you can never have enough people, and you can never have enough water,” said Chief Jonker.

To receive a better rating, ISO requires that within five minutes of arriving on scene, a flow of 200 gallons per minute is established. Then, within 20 minutes of arriving on scene, a flow of 250 gallons per minute is established, uninterrupted, for two and one-half hours.

“That’s quite a feat if you don’t have fire hydrants,” Chief Jonker said, which is why getting the new tanker was critical.

The new tanker will have more horsepower and maneuverability, can offload water at 3,000 gallons per minute, and can be operated by a single person who would not have to leave the cab.

The current tanker can only offload a maximum of 750 gallons per minute, Chief Jonker said. If a tanker cannot offload fast enough, it has a “domino effect” on the entire tanker shuttle, which is used in districts that lack hydrants.

“As a matter of fact,” Chief Jonker said, “Vista did a regional water supply drill a few years ago, and they actually had to pull our tanker out of the shuttle because it slowed down the whole operation because they weren’t getting the flow that they needed.”

“That’s sort of the key thing,” he said, “we can’t get ISO back in until we get that tanker in the door. Even if the Town said no, it doesn’t matter how many dry hydrants you put in, you need a tanker.”

Although ISO is primarily concerned with property damage, its standards often address life safety and in the end, positively effect the department’s operations.

Budget

Fire Department budget requests are seldom wish lists. Within the hydrant districts, much of improvement to the town’s ratings can be achieved by acquiring equipment for each apparatus or truck — the funding for which is often cut because new apparatus are expensive.

This year, the department requested $41,000 in the 2007-08 budget for equipment.

“What (the ISO is) also looking at is not the engines themselves and the pump capacity, but what equipment should be on there and what are you missing,” said Chief Jonker.

Equipment ranges from foam, to nozzles, deck guns to even flashlights. For every piece of equipment missing, points are deducted off of the full credit.

“Our contention is, you’re paying a lot of money for a fire apparatus and you’re not getting anywhere near the full credit that you could because you’re missing equipment, which by the way, would also help us do our job better,” said Chief Jonker.

“The Town is doing a great job now of understanding that when we come to them with a certain dollar amount that they actually give it to us because otherwise we have to cut the quality or can’t put the equipment on that we need and it comes back to haunt you in maintenance bills,” he said.

In terms of what ISO requires for hydrant areas, he added, “we’re really most of the way there.”

Phase Two

Residences outside of the hydrant area, which require the retrieval and delivery of water, are located further from the downtown area, are larger and usually contain more property to protect.

ISO automatically assigns a rating of nine to non-hydrant areas, but that could change to an eight “B” with the new tanker.

As part of the initiative, the department will use the Town’s GIS (Geographic Information System) system to map available water sources. The technology allows firefighters to determine where long distances exist between water sources, who is near each source, and capacity in gallons per minute.

“If you have water on your property, and you and your neighbors kick in a couple $1,000, you’re going to see substantial savings,” Chief Jonker said, “that will pay itself back in a year or two and it gives us the ability to do a better job of putting out the fire in your house.”

One owner of a large house in town saw a 60 percent discount in his insurance premium because he installed a dry hydrant on his property.

The hydrant, which is simply a pipe system that connects to a water source, will flow 1,000 gallons per minute and withstand a 50-year drought level test, Chief Jonker said.

Plan Now, Save Later

The Town cut the department’s request for a new engine this year, but the acquisition of such will be important in the coming years for several reasons, according to Chief Jonker.

ISO requires a fleet of at least one attack engine, a supply engine, a ladder truck and a command vehicle to fight a house fire in the hydrant area — the bare minimum, which the department has. But outside the hydrant area, since water must be retrieved and delivered to the scene, the requirements are substantially more rigorous.

Replacing Engine 1, a 10-year-old apparatus that needs constant repair, would serve two purposes. If it retired from its attack position as the first responder on a scene it could replace the current 500-gallon supply Engine 9. Add to that the purchase of a new 1,000 gallon Engine 1 and the new 3,000 gallon tanker, and that is essentially 5,000 gallons of water immediately on the scene.

Coupled with an automatic aid call for a tanker from another town, which could supply between 2,500 to 3,500 gallons, on first alarm — right away — firefighters would have nearly 8,000 gallons to immediately use, Chief Jonker said.

“It’s really about more efficiently using the apparatus that we have in the firehouse,” said Chief Jonker, the life of Engine 1 could be greatly extended if it’s not going out on three calls a day.

2010

Fire departments nationwide are already seeing the impact of new EPA regulations on diesel fuel exhaust emissions, resulting in apparatus that are proportionately wider than they were before.

“Unfortunately, they have not exempted fire apparatus from this,” Chief Jonker said.
Manufacturers are now having to build bigger packages to fit what is needed to reburn diesel exhaust — predictions indicate the width of future trucks will be the same as an over-the-road tractor trailer.

The new tanker was ordered from a manufacturer that makes the narrowest trucks available.

“We’re still very unclear as to how they’re going to accommodate this in their vehicles,” he said.

The acquisition of apparatus as soon as possible is strategically cost effective for the Town. By 2010, trucks will be too wide to fit in the firehouse as it stands.

This could be addressed by the installation of a substation elsewhere in town, Chief Jonker said, or by reconfiguring the bays going across the lateral space.

Either way, he said, the department would like to remain at its current location.

“It’s too early to tell, but we wanted to make sure that this was on the radar screen for the folks in town government. And it not only impacts us, but it impacts most of the firehouses in New England, quite frankly, because they’re all very old,” Chief Jonker said.

Progress

The department has already made many improvements to its operations over the last six years, including the increase of duty personnel and volunteers, technological improvements, record keeping, annual and monthly equipment testing and pre-fire planning for commercial facilities.

Appropriately outfitting apparatus will play a large role in reaching ISO standards, but other goals large and small, such as documenting the many training hours the department has logged and replacing Engine 9, part of the plan to complete phase two, will be pursued as the process continues.