HIGH POINT, NC – On Wednesday, the High Point Fire Department learned that it had achieved the best ranking that a fire department can get, a Class 1 ranking from the ISO. The ISO is an organization that tracks property and casualty insurance risk and also evaluates and rates a community's ability to handle fires.
The rating means that the High Point community is better equipped to fight fires which in turn, means that your insurance premiums can actually go down.
2 Wants To Know how it all works and what it all means for your wallet.
The thought is that the better equipped a community is to fight fires, the less likely it is that homes and businesses in your area will sustain major fire damage.
We found out that it's not as big of an impact on homeowners as it is on business owners.
For 17 years, Debbie Workman has owned DeBeen Expresso in High Point. Like every business owner, she spends a lot of money on insuring her business.
"Insurance is a hassle," said Workman.
However, her rates could soon be going down. It's all thanks to the fact that the High Point Fire Department earned that class 1 ranking from the ISO program, also known as the Fire Suppression Rating Schedule.
"Insurance savings could help us to save on the bottom line," said Workman. "It's great to offer better pricing for customers, and maybe offer more of a product line."
Dan Loggins, an insurance agent at State Farm says, not only does the ISO rating help insurers measure a community's risk of fire damage, but it helps cities and towns improve their emergency preparedness.
"Of course, the lower the number, the better," said Loggins. "This is really good news for the people of high point in a lot of ways."
Glenn Clapp, the Emergency Manager for the City of High Point says it's a process that involves the entire community.
"It involves many different areas so we had to pull a collaborative team together not only within the fire department in terms of our training in inspections divisions, our administrative divisions, and our suppression divisions," said Clapp. "We also had to pull together departments from various places in the city."
The rating will also help put money back in the pocket of business owners like Workman.
"More for our community, it affects the prices all in all," said Workman. "So we are more accessible to everybody in the community."
As far as homeowners go, if you look at your policy -- you will notice you do get a discount if your fire department gets high marks.
For example -- if your department scores between a 1 and 5 -- you qualify for the lowest rate possible. Anything above a 6 rating could change the amount of insurance premiums that you might pay. However, it never hurts to go have a meeting face-to-face with your insurance agent to make sure things are right.
When it comes to other fire departments in the Triad area, we mentioned already that High Point has the top ranking of class 1. The same goes for Greensboro who also has a class 1 ranking.
Winston-Salem has a class 2 rating. Burlington is ranked as a class 3 and Kernersville has a class 4 rating.
