Fire equipment loans generate controversy

MAT-SU – Allegations that the Big Lake Fire Department borrowed fire equipment from other Mat-Su Borough departments during a visit from the Insurance Services Organization (ISO) has prompted an ISO investigation.

The Insurance Services Organization rates fire departments for homeowners’ insurance companies. The rating is crucial to determining insurance premiums, and fire departments often use their ISO ranking as a measure of how well a department functions.

In August 2005, ISO came to rate Big Lake. At the time, Big Lake Fire Chief Bill Gamble said he sent a memo to other departments asking to borrow equipment for use on Big Lake trucks. He said he was acting on advice from Jack Krill, then chief of the Central Mat-Su Fire Department, who had gone through his own ISO inspection and was something of a firefighting expert in the Borough.

Gamble said that Krill informed him borrowing equipment for the inspection was standard procedure among fire departments, so long as the equipment was replaced by new stuff later.

Gamble said from the time he was given notice of the pending inspection until inspectors arrived, he didn’t have time to order equipment needed for the evaluation, but that he has since purchased tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and returned what had been borrowed.

Mat-Su Borough Director of Emergency Services Dennis Brodigan said he, Gamble and Krill sat down to discuss the plan and his order was that the equipment would stay on the trucks until replacements arrived.

“In no way, shape or form did we try to deceive anybody,” Brodigan said.

Krill has a different recollection of events. He said he was never consulted about borrowing equipment and didn’t hear about it until Gamble circulated his request.

“I was shocked when I got the fax from Bill Gamble requesting the equipment and that’s why I called him and said, ‘This isn’t right; I’m not going to loan equipment,’” Krill said.

Krill now works as a consultant for an engineering firm. The Borough fired him in March 2007 at the tail-end of a four-month saga that unfolded as he protested his removal, the Borough laid bare its list of grievances against him and Krill defended himself.

In a 23-page letter to Mat-Su Assemblywoman Mary Kvalheim dated Nov. 26, 2007, which dealt with, among other matters, the Big Lake ISO visit, Krill accuses Gamble and Brodigan of lying to ISO.

“I questioned the ethics of this directly to [Brodigan], who did not see anything inappropriate with the request because they planned to purchase their own equipment in the future,” Krill says in the letter.

Krill said he eventually handed the equipment over to Big Lake.

“It wasn’t something I was going to be insubordinate about,” Krill said. “It wasn’t worth a disciplinary action.”

Brodigan said the conversation about ethics never took place and Krill was on board with the plan from the start.

“I have never had my ethics questioned,” Brodigan said. “And if I did, I truly would have taken a good, hard look at it.”

Still, Gamble said, in the end it really didn’t matter. The result of the evaluation was that Big Lake was ranked 8b, the same rating it had previously, and there was talk of even dropping the department a rank or two, a change the department was eventually able to hold off.

The department was found deficient on a couple of systemic issues, Gamble and Brodigan said. The department couldn’t bring enough water to a fire and couldn’t show the requisite number of firefighter responses. Equipment, they said, didn’t really play into the rating.

Brodigan and Gamble also said an internal Borough investigation showed nothing improper was done and the borrowed equipment is a non-issue.

“Hopefully [ISO] will agree with us that it really is a non-issue,” Gamble said.

Gamble said he believes it odd that Krill has turned around and tried to use the issue against Big Lake. Gamble brought up allegations that the Central Mat-Su Fire Department had engaged in fraud during its own evaluation, which happened prior to Big Lake’s.

Gamble said Krill moved equipment from one station to another ahead of the ISO investigator so the equipment would be counted twice and the department would get more points.

Krill said that never happened.

“Morally and ethically it’s wrong and I was responsible for that rating, and I wasn’t going to jeopardize millions of dollars of property insurance rates for anything,” Krill said.

Brodigan agrees with Krill. He said when the allegations of impropriety at Central came to light he talked to a number of Central firefighters who had helped with the evaluation, some of whom were the first to raise the allegations, and found nothing out of place.

“There were apparatus moved around, but it was at the request or the approval of the ISO auditor,” Brodigan said. “Unfortunately, the front-line firefighters that were moving the equipment never realized that.”

Whatever happened at Central, Gamble said that Big Lake is preparing for another visit from ISO. He said ISO asked to look into Big Lake’s records and do another inspection.

But Gamble isn’t worried. He said he never lied to anyone or deceived inspectors. He informed ISO of the borrowed equipment at the time his department was inspected and has had a running correspondence with the company ever since.

The Chicago-based ISO inspector who conducted the Big Lake inspection was not available for comment as of press time Monday.

As far as the department goes, if anything, since the previous inspection things have improved, Gamble and Brodigan said. The department has raised the number of responders going to fires and is expecting the delivery of a new tanker.

As to whether investigators will find anything wrong with the way Big Lake handled its 2005 inspection, Brodigan said he can’t say.

“We’ll see what they find out when they come up here,” he said.

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