BURLINGTON FIRE DISTRICT INSURANCE CLASSIFICATION REMAINS CLASS 3
Personnel from the Department of Insurance visited Burlington February 7-11 to evaluate Burlington's ability to suppress fires within the City. Recently the City received results from the Office of State Fire Marshall after completing their evaluation and the Burlington Fire District will continue as Class 3. Chief Jay Smith says, “We are fortunate to have maintained our class 3 protection rating which minimizes the cost of fire protection insurance to the citizens of Burlington. All members of our staff have devoted a tremendous amount of time and effort to our inspection.”
The purpose of their visit was to gather information needed to determine a fire insurance classification that may be used in the calculation of property insurance premiums. The survey was not conducted for property loss prevention or life safety purposes and no life safety or property loss prevention recommendations were made. The rate will be effective August 1, 2005.
The 3 classification applies to properties with a needed fire flow of 3500 gpm or less. The private and public protection at properties with larger needed fire flows are individually evaluated, and may vary from 3 classification. In North Carolina there are 114 Class 5 ratings, 54 Class 4 ratings, 24 other 3 classifications, five 2 classifications and Greensboro is the only 1 classification.
Municipal fire departments the size of Burlington are normally evaluated by the Insurance Services Office (ISO) at least once every 10 years. These evaluations are conducted to gather information used to assist in setting fire insurance rates. Municipalities with a population under 100,000 are evaluated by the N.C. Department of Insurance, and the results are distributed to ISO.
The ISO evaluation schedule is divided into four parts: 50% of the rating comes directly from fire department operations; 40% from water supply; 10% from the emergency communications system; and, the fourth area of evaluation is divergence. Points are deducted if one area of evaluation is not proportional to the others.
The Fire Department was graded on available equipment, fire station and unit distribution, staffing and training. Water supply received credits for capacity and distribution of available water and fire hydrant maintenance and distribution. Communications was evaluated on management of alarms, dispatch of emergency calls and telephone receiving equipment. A portion of the ISO evaluation included flowing water from approximately 35 fire hydrants City-wide.
A copy of the Grading Sheet and the results of the hydrant flow tests witnessed during the visit are available in the office of the City Clerk.