PRESS RELEASE: Financial Benefit to Homeowners

Carver Fire Department is now an ISO Class 2 Department.

At the Tuesday Select Board meeting, we announced that after an exhaustive credentialing evaluation conducted by the National Insurance Service Office (ISO), through their Fire Insurance Rating, your Carver Fire Department has received an extremely high ISO evaluation score of a 2/2Y, a tremendous improvement from a previous level 9. To our knowledge, we have received the highest ISO ranking for a Call Fire Department in Massachusetts.

ISO ranks all Fire Departments across the United States from a level 1 through 10, with 1 being the highest and 10 being the lowest. Due to not having a municipal fire protection water supply system (fire hydrants), this is a drastic improvement from our previous score of a level 9. The better the ISO Rating, the lower your insurance premium.

We are now ranked nationally within the top 4% of Fire Departments across the entire country! 46,000 Fire Departments are included in this ranking.

You cannot imagine the amount of work that went into this evaluation, but you can imagine that this ranking is a direct result of TEAMWORK, the support of our community, and the dedication our members give to CFD.

The evaluation scoring, among hundreds of items scored, looked at Response Times, Engine Manning and Firefighter Certifications. Again, this is a direct result of the dedication of our members, and the support of our community. Thank you!

What this means for our residents and business owners:

• Every resident should be extremely proud of your Fire Department’s accomplishments to be ranked in the top 4% of Fire Departments across the nation.

• This status could lower the cost of our resident’s homeowners insurance policy from approximately $60 to $260 per household (5% to 20% reduction). That is huge, considering the cost of our Department is about $54 per person within our community.

• Credit should be given to YOU. Our residents, firefighters, Select Board, and Town Administrator have chosen to invest in your Fire Department. Both in funding for capital projects, believing in the On Call System, and supporting our needs.

• Carver residents and business owners are urged to contact their insurance agent and advise them of the new ISO classification rating. Ask for them to review your individual fire insurance premium to ensure they are using the new classification when deterining your homeowner’s insurance premium.

An explanation of the ISO review process:

The classification is a multi step evaluation.
Mutiple field surveys along with fire station inspections from an ISO representative were conducted.
The ISO score is graded on a 105.5 point scale, where the department is reviewed in 4 major areas – Emergency Communications Systems (10 points), Fire Department Operations(50 points), Water Supply(40 points), and Community Risk Reduction.(5.5 points).

Each of these categories listed above are further broken down into mumenrous sub categories, each given a number scored, provided sufficient documentation proves that the department successfully completed that requirement.

CFD would like to thank the Select Board, Town Administrator, the residents of our community, our fire and public safety dispatchers, and especially our officers and firefighters on this accomplishment.

The substantial efforts taken to improve our score was not a requirement, and solely a proactive measure to give back to the people of Carver.