City’s fire safety faces insurance exam [Gloucester Daily Times, Mass.]

Jan. 20--Local fire and city officials say the regular closures of Gloucester's outlying fire stations could soon pose a new problem for homeowners: higher home insurance premiums.

The Insurance Services Office, or ISO -- a national company that evaluates communities' fire protection, among other services, for the insurance industry -- has taken preliminary steps toward examining Gloucester's firefighting prowess.

The ISO rates a community based on what it finds, and many insurers take that into account when setting premiums.

The last time ISO rated the city's firefighting muscle, it had five fire stations, 92 line firefighters, and consistent 6-minute response times.

That was around 1990, said interim Fire Chief Phil Dench.

He said that, while ISO generally reviews a city every five to 10 years, it has been about 20 years since it last certified Gloucester.

Dench said ISO has talked with him for preliminary information on the Fire Department before representatives carry out a review the city.

City councilors in the two wards with regularly closed fire stations say a possible increase in insurance premiums isn't their primary concern.

"(Adequate) response times for medical emergencies are paramount," said City Council president and Ward 4 Councilor Jackie Hardy,.

The Bay View Fire Station sits -- mostly closed -- in Ward 4. Opening it, Hardy said, would help with response times to the villages of Bay View and Lanesville, but, given the Fire Department' staffing levels, she added, responses to Lanesville put other parts of the city in jeopardy.

Ward 5 Councilor Greg Verga said the frequent station closures present public safety problems for West Gloucester and Magnolia, the cores of his ward. Magnolia's fire station hasn't been open since late August, and, until early this month, West Gloucester was closed off and on as well.

Saying the closed stations create an issue for "Ward 5 as a whole," Verga said any increase in insurance premiums would add insult to injury for homeowner and taxpayers.

Insurance companies use ISO's public protection classification rating to evaluate a community's firefighting capabilities.

Homeowners in cities and towns with a better rating often see lower insurance premiums than towns with higher ones. The ISO sets fire protection standards for municipalities across the nation, and those standards provide incentives for communities to improve firefighting services, said Joseph Masington, ISO's assistant vice president of risk decision services.

ISO, he said, does not set insurance premiums. The company, however, assigns a rating to a town between 1 and 10 -- with 1 signaling exemplary fire protection, and 10 meaning the city or town doesn't meet ISO's minimum fire safety standards.

At the moment, said Dench, Gloucester is a 4 on that scale.

Deputy Fire Chief Steve Aiello said the ISO looks at staffing levels, coverage area, stations and response times when it critiques a fire department. In that vein, the department the company will examine this year doesn't look much like it did in the 1990s.

When the company rated Gloucester two decades ago, Aiello said, the department had an East Gloucester fire station, and staffed a minimum of 19 firefighters per shift. That happened, he said, almost every day during the year, and those firefighters, he said, could reach much of Gloucester's 30 square miles in less than six minutes.

"Today, you have two stations open (year-round)," he said, adding that the department now responds to its calls within six minutes some 75 percent of the time.

Two of the department's four stations are usually closed and Mayor Carolyn Kirk has placed the onus of that on the department's contract.

On a shift of 17 firefighters, if two are out on medical leave, one out sick, and two at the fire academy, the department has to fill to a minimum 14 firefighter slots to maintain Central Station and both ambulance crews, with other stations opened if more firefighters can work.

Traditionally, the department has called in off-duty firefighters on overtime to fill the manning needs, but the department exhausted $200,000 worth of overtime last month, depleting the account.

Kirk placed $30,000 from the city's surplus into the department to keep West Gloucester open into mid-February. But future money, the mayor has said, hinges on progress in contract talks -- and there was little on Thursday (See related story).

Kirk said the Fire Department's staffing issues date to a series of deep cuts early in the new century, including a significant cut in the state's local aid funding for fiscal 2002.

While the Fire Department has been cut back, said Aiello, the city's water system has made strides since the last ISO rating. In the 1990s, said Aiello, many neighborhoods in the city didn't have fire hydrants. Now, there's only one neighborhood that lacks one, he said. Water pressure and storage have seen improvements as well, he added.

ISO, Masington said, doesn't speculate on how rating changes will affect a community. If the rating goes down, according to the ISO mitigation website, the company notifies the municipality, but doesn't distribute that rating to insurers.

Instead, it identifies what the community has to improve to lift its classification, and if that community takes those problems on, ISO will postpone publishing the rating for 90 days. If the city doesn't improve or shows no desire to, the company will distribute the new rating.

"For some people, it will be an eye opener," said Aiello.

The city's goal, he said, shouldn't be to maintain it's Level 4 status, but improve and save residents some money if it can.

No matter what happens with insurance premiums, said Hardy, the city administration and the union have to do something to fill the empty fire stations and ensure quick response times.

Residents who live in the outskirts, she said, are worried that medical help might not arrive for their families in time.

"Nobody wants to budge," Hardy said. "Who suffers? The city."

Steven Fletcher may be contacted at 1-978-283-7000 x3455, or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @stevengdt.

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