Butte fire rating drops

Frontiersman

BUTTE — The Butte Fire Department has lowered its rating with the Insurance Services Organization, a change that could potentially lower insurance rates for homeowners in the area.

“That’s great for us,” Butte Fire Chief Charles Von Gunten said. “It means all that hard work pays off. And it means that the homeowners can look at a possible reduction in their fire insurance.”

The change, which the Mat-Su Borough announced this weekend, brings the rating for the department from an 8b/10 to a 6/10. The two numbers reflect distance from a fire station. Homes within five miles of Butte’s two stations can count on the 6 rating, homes farther out are rated at 10, or unprotected, Von Gunten said.

The fire chief said his department worked for months training and getting its equipment in order leading up to an inspector’s visit in 2007. Still, the rating change is at least partially a surprise.

“We got a better rating then we had planned on,” Von Gunten said. “Our intentions were to try to get a seven.”

Von Gunten said the department has held its 8b/10 rating since the early 1990s, the last time inspectors came through.

The organization looks at most every aspect of a department, from its hoses to its responders, from records of training session attendance to the condition of the fire engines and other equipment.

In Butte, part of preparing for the inspectors meant looking at streams, rivers and lakes, Von Gunten said. The department relies on water bodies to refill depleted tankers. Leading up to the rating, staff prepared detailed maps with GPS coordinates and listings for various bodies’ seasonal availability and capacity.

In hard dollars, Von Gunten said the savings to homeowners will depend upon their insurance carriers. But his hunch is that homeowners could likely see a drop in insurance rates similar to those experienced in Wasilla when the Central Mat-Su Fire Department lowered its ISO rating from 4/8b to a flat 4 rating in 2006. In Wasilla at the time, the split rating referred to distance from a fire hydrant, with the 4 rating applying to homes 1,000 feet away. Homes more than five miles from a station or a hydrant are and remain rated 10.

At the time that Central’s rating dropped, Von Gunten said, fire officials projected a $150 to $250 reduction in homeowners’ insurance costs. Although Butte’s ratings are different, “An 8 to a 6 is a pretty good-sized drop.”

The Butte Fire Department covers 45 square miles and has a roster of 30 on-call firefighters and 10 explorers, Von Gunten said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiers-man.com or 352-2270.