Fire stations seek funds, staff, lower ISO ratings

Monday, April 7, 2014

Correction: Putting a new fire station in the Pinnacle Valley Road area could reduce the current 20-minute response time by the West Pulaski Fire Protection District to eight minutes, District Chief Ron Wheeler said in a recent interview. Wheeler said he thinks the result would improve the area's Insurance Service Office fire protection rating from 10 down to 5.

Fire departments in Arkansas - and nationwide - are subject to new standards this year from the company that evaluates their abilities to respond to fires, which in turn affects what kind of coverage an insurance company is willing to provide homeowners.

The Insurance Service Office is a private company that provides the evaluations to insurers across the United States. The fire departments are rated on a scale of 1 to 10 based on department staffing, equipment, fire alarms, water supplies and access to fire hydrants.

The lower the number, the lower the homeowners’ insurance rates. A rating of 10 often means homeowners cannot obtain insurance coverage.

In the United States, 28.9 percent of fire departments have Insurance Service Office ratings of 9 or 10. In Arkansas, that percentage is 42.9.

“Every department in the state is trying to lower their ISO ratings,” said Jimmy Sullivent Jr., president of the Arkansas Rural and Volunteer Fire Association.

Departments can now request a rating review during each two-year period the Insurance Service Office asks for updated information on each station.

Most of Arkansas is served by rural and volunteer fire departments, which must deal with water-accessibility and personnel problems. That means higher insurance rates for the homeowners they protect.

“More rural areas don’t have the water supply [to have lower ratings],” Sullivent said.

In addition, fewer firefighters manning a station means a lower insurance rating.

Volunteer fire departments need three times more firefighters manning the stations to have the same Insurance Service Office ratings as paid firefighter departments have, according to Insurance Service Office rules. That’s because volunteer firefighters are less often available to respond to emergency calls, company spokesman Robert Andrews wrote in an email.

Out of the state’s nearly 900 certified fire departments, only 27 are paid municipal departments with low ratings. Sixty-four departments are “part paid,” or departments that pay at least one person more than $5,000 a year to be at the station. Such departments are most common in small cities or areas abutting cities.

Pulaski County Director of Emergency Management Andy Traffanstedt said the two biggest problems faced by nonmunicipal departments in the county were struggling finances and dwindling staff, with fewer people willing to be volunteer firefighters.

In Pulaski County, municipal fire departments have Insurance Service Office ratings of 3 or lower, and volunteer departments and rural fire districts have ratings ranging from 3 to 10. Half of the 16 departments that operate in the unincorporated area have a rating of 9 or 10 in at least a portion of their districts.

Some fire departments provide incentives to firefighters to keep them on their active lists and at the station to respond to emergency calls. Some don’t.

The West Pulaski Fire Protection District is all volunteer, with ratings of 5, 6 and 10 in various areas. The district serves about 10,000 people living or working in about 3,000 structures.

For several months, district officials have been trying to raise money to build another fire station in the area rated 10.

That area, around Pinnacle Valley Road, is the only part of the three-county fire district that is not within 5 or 6 miles of a station. Right now, response time for those residents is 20 minutes, District Chief Ron Wheeler said. A nearby station could lower the rating to 8, he said.

Wheeler said he knew of at least one homeowner in the area who recently saw his insurance increase from $3,500 to $10,400 because of issues including fire coverage.

So far, the district has raised $130,000 in donations from residents. Wheeler said $180,000 would likely be the minimum cost to build a station that would use old trucks from other stations, and he’s hoping for $100,000 more.

“We’re getting there,” he said.

The West Pulaski Fire Protection District covers portions of Pulaski, Saline and Perry counties. Within Pulaski County, it is classified as a “fire protection district” because it charges a $50 subscription fee collected on residents’ property tax bills and $100 on businesses’ property tax bills, which experts say is the ideal strategy for fire departments to collect such fees.

Wheeler said the return rate on those charges is much higher than the 65 percent rate from Perry and Saline county residents, who are billed manually instead.

Kendall Snyder, of the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management’s Office of Fire Services, said most departments across the state are collecting only about 50 percent of dues when billing manually. The rate of return for fees collected through county tax collectors and treasurers is 60 percent to 90 percent, he said.

A few departments in Pulaski County have other funding advantages that help keep insurance ratings low.

Arch Street Fire Department has a rating of 5. It was once known as a water improvement district and pulls in more than $300,000 each year through department fees attached to residents’ water bills. Those fees increased last year by 33 percent to $9.99 each month to prevent future financial problems, board member Jim Vandergrift said.

At Arch Street Fire Department’s south location, station manager Burkie Hollenberger’s full-time job is to maintain the department’s facilities and be ready to go out if a call comes.

Hollenberger, who made $24,805.77 in 2012, is often joined by a few other firefighters who are paid to help him manage the station part time.

In 2012, six other firefighters were paid $1,100 to $7,000 to work part time at the station. The department’s chief, John Payne, made $4,352.40.

The idea behind paying firefighters for some work is to keep them interested in serving the department, which in turn helps the department provide better coverage and lower insurance ratings, Vandergrift said.

Crystal Fire Protection District, which covers portions of Pulaski and Saline counties, has a rating of 3. It offers incentive for volunteer firefighters by housing them in the station overnight.

Gravel Ridge Fire Protection District, which also has a rating of 3, collects feesthrough the county treasurer’s office but is also aided by Sherwood, which pays for office staffing and worker’s compensation. Sherwood also dispatches the firefighters for the district.

The Gravel Ridge district was a volunteer department until the city began to help and the district began applying for grants that helped with staffing. This year, the district received a $200,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to hire workers for the department.

District Chief Andy Traffanstedt, who is also the director of Pulaski County’s Office of Emergency Management, said all fire departments could apply for the grant but noted that it involved a lot of paperwork that might be too much for a district without office workers.

Wheeler said he’s aware of grants such as the one Gravel Ridge received but agreed that the West Pulaski Fire Protection District would have a tough time qualifying for and managing a grant without office workers.

What most fire departments and emergency management officials say they need most of all is people.

But persuading people who have jobs and families to volunteer as firefighters is increasingly difficult, particularly in more rural areas of Arkansas where populations are shrinking and the young and more able-bodied are moving to cities, said Sullivent, the rural fire association chief.

Many rural departments rely on each other to respond to emergencies they don’t have the personnel to reach, called “mutual aid” agreements. Even urban departments have mutual aid stations, but some departments rely on them more than others.

“We’ve all got to start working together better,” Sullivent said.

Sullivent manages the District 6 Volunteer Fire Department in Crawford County.

Sullivent, Wheeler, Vandergrift, Traffanstedt and Snyder all said having more firefighters would help with their departments’ coverages and lower their insurance ratings.

“Help your community out and join the volunteer fire department,” Sullivent said.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 04/07/2014