By Patrick Murtha
St. Marys Star – August 21, 2013
Submitted by Newz Group Clipping Service – September 19, 2013
The Public Protection Classification (PPC) rating is very much like a golf score: the lower the number, the better it is.
St. Marys Fire Department’s rating, recently re-assessed by the ISO (Insurance Services Office), was lowered, both for the city and for the rural region around St. Marys. Since the last assessment, St. Marys Fire Department had been rated as a Class 5 fire department for the city, and a Class 9 department for the surrounding area.
However, In July, ISO returned to St. Marys to re-evaluate the department. At the end of July, Fire Chief Ray Barthuly received the good news: the fire department was “being downgraded” from Class 5 to Class 4, and the rural district was reclassified as a split classification 4/8B.
At that point, St. Marys joined three other departments in the county that had already acquired a Class 4 rating, Wamego, Onaga, and the southern corner of Pottawatomie County Fire District 5 (in the Manhattan area).
In the state of Kansas, according to the ISO’s website, only about 10 percent of fire departments currently have a Class 4 rating or lower. Throughout the entire country, however, 16 percent of the 48,960 fire departments graded by ISO have acquired Class 4 or lower status.
In order to acquire the perfect score of Class 1, the emergency communication must be perfect. The department must have training facilities, 20 hours of training time, state-of-the-art equipment. The water supply must be able to provide at least 1,000 gallons per minute for a specific space of time. According to ISO, only 57 departments nationwide are listed as Class 1 departments. One of those departments is in Kansas.
“All departments, whether they have volunteer firefighters or full-time firefighters,” Barthuly said, “are graded on the same standards. ISO looks at dispatch and communication capabilities, the trucks, supplies, and personnel of the fire department, and the water supply.”
For communication—a tribute to Pottawatomie County’s emergency system—St. Marys received a near perfect score. In fact, the report said the “receiving and handling fire alarms” were on a Class 1 level.
The communication aspect, however, was only ten percent of the evaluation. The grading of fire department, trucks and personnel, and the water supply carried the most weight of fifty and forty percent.
“You have to have a water system in place, and that’s a big factor,” said Bruce Brazzle, Fire Superintendent at Pottawatomie County Emergency Management. “You have to have large mains—eight, ten, twelve inch mains—and steamer hydrants.”
“That’s one of the biggest things,” Brazzle added. “But of course, documentation of your training, your personnel, and the equipment that you carry on the truck—all of those give you points, and that’s all added up.”
Overall, St. Marys fire department came out with 62.5 points out of 100. This was enough to put them with 62 other Kansas departments, and 5,018 other departments nationwide in the Class 4 category.
In the rural part of the St. Marys fire district, the classification was lowered—again, that is good—from a Class 9 to a split Class 4/8B. The Class 4 was given, as it was in town, because of some rural hydrants, department response time, firefighting capabilities, and other reasons.
The Class 8B was given to those areas within five miles of the fire station that have no water access. “Class 8B,” the report reads, “is a special classification that recognizes a superior level of fire protection in otherwise Class 9 areas. It is designated to represent a fire protection delivery system that is superior except for a lack of a water supply system capable of the minimum FSRS (Fire Suppression Rating Schedule) fire flow criteria of 250 gpm (gallons per minute) for 2 hours.”
In simpler words, the communication is good, the fire department is good, but the water supply, outside of what the department brings with them, is non-existent. With this rating of 8B for the rural aspect of St. Marys, the department joined only seven other Kansas departments with 8B classification.
“At nine, you’ve got a little bit of fire protection,” Brazzle said, “but once you get to an eight, it’s telling you that you’ve got a fire department that’s established, you’ve got the hose, you’ve got the equipment, and you can carry enough water to supply it. And the chances of you saving that structure are much, much better when you’re an eight versus a nine.”
The purpose of the PPC rating principally is for fire protection insurance. The rating is but a factor of the homeowner’s insurance premium, said Jim Newins, director of the property and casualty department at the Kansas Insurance Department in Topeka. It is a piece of the pie that determines what the homeowner will pay for fire insurance.
“So if the score goes higher, it will increase the premiums,” Newins said, “but if it goes down, the premiums will be lower because of this factor.”
Most homeowners in the city, however, will hardly notice any change in their insurance because of the rate change. When the classification is lowered from a five to a four, the homeowner will only save a few dollars in his premium. The noticeable change comes when the classification moves down from a nine to an eight.
“And then on down from a seven, six, five,” Brazzle said, “you still get some discount points but nothing dramatic like from a nine to an eight.”
When the rating is lowered from nine to eight, the premium can be lowered by, at times, several hundred dollars. However, this depends on the insurance company.
Newins said that each insurance company determines how much the PPC rates will affect the insurance premium.
“It will vary by company,” Newins said. “Once the insurance companies set their rate factors for the table one through ten—they have to justify that—but once the table is set, then it’s just a matter of ISO ratings and how that changes.”
Regardless, the lowering of the classification for St. Marys is nothing to snort at. It is a sign that the department has continued to offer solid fire protection for its district and that they have good tools and a good water supply.
“We’ve been graded on our merits,” Barthuly said, “but we still have room to improve.”
Be First to Comment