Insurance savings in store for Houston property owners

HOUSTON — Just a few days since a new fire service area rating went into effect, folks are already seeing big savings on their homeowner insurance costs.

Insurance agent and Houston City Council member Gina Jorgensen said her customers are saving anywhere from a few hundred dollars up to $1,500 annually.

She said it’s been a pleasure sharing the news of the city’s new ISO rating with customers who call and ask what they’d done to warrant a refund.

“I’m very proud of our fire department, our mayor and our city,” Jorgensen said.

Mayor Virgie Thompson said she saved about $400 on her home. People with more expensive homes will save more, she said.

But for most people to see savings, they will need to reach out to their insurer and tell them about the city’s improved Insurance Services Office rating, from 8b to 5. ISO is a nationwide group is the yardstick against which fire departments are measured.

City of Houston has a copy of the letter online at bit.ly/Ogo2ol and hard copies are available at city hall, too, Thompson said.

The lower the ISO number, the better the rating for insurance purposes, she said.

Here’s how neighboring fire departments stack up to Houston. Central Mat-Su Fire Department is rated a 4, West Lakes Fire Department is a 5 and now Houston also is a 5.

Houston Fire Chief Tom Hood said the change in ISO rating is the culmination of hundreds of hours of work by volunteers over the past eight years.

Hood said the department operated on a half mill of funding and couldn’t have achieved the improved rating if not for time donated by volunteers and support from the city council and mayor.

“We’re all on the same page,” Hood said.

“We’re doing this to help people,” Thompson added.

A new tanker truck funded by a state appropriation secured by Sen. Charlie Huggins and Rep. Mark Neuman helped the department purchase a new red and black, 3,000-gallon Pierce tanker.

That tanker also helped the city improve its ISO rating, Thompson said. That’s because ultimately ISO equals water, she said.

“The faster you can get water to the fire, the better your ISO is,” Thompson said.

Chief Hood said it took about six months just to decide on all the specs for the new tanker.

“It’s an awesome truck,” he said. “It will last us for quite a few years.”

Thompson said the new truck’s paint scheme is red and black — a salute to the Houston High School Hawks.

During the Alaska Shield exercise March 27 to April 3, Hood said the scenario presented was that an earthquake had occurred along the Castle Mountain Fault, which runs right behind the fire station and city hall, Hood said.

During that dramatization, he said the fire station and city hall were both on fire and the bridge across the Little Su had collapsed.

Hood said that highlights a very real problem the city faces — all of its fire and emergency services equipment is located on one side of the Little Su. But the city of Houston extends for miles on both sides of the river, he said.

“We need another fire station on the other side of the bridge,” Hood said.

To that end, Thompson said the city has request $3.2 million state aid to build a second fire station on the other side of the Little Su and to buy a new ladder truck to house there.

She said the current building off Kenlar Road is just a metal shell that keeps a pumper from freezing.

All 18 of Houston’s paid on-call firefighters, plus Chief Hood and the captain, were on hand Tuesday to help with monthly maintenance and to celebrate their achievement with pizza and cake.

Chief Hood said at the first training of each month, the whole Houston crew goes through every piece of equipment the department owns to make sure it is all clean, gassed and oiled and ready for use when the next emergency strikes.

“Maintenance matters,” he said. “We have to take care of what we got.”

Contact Heather A. Resz at 352-2268 or heather.resz@frontiersman.com.