Abstract: On 18th June of 2007, a blaze occurred in Charleston, South Carolina, which forced the ISO, an independent fire insurance agency in America, to reevaluate the insurance rating of city's fire department. The announcement was made for the same on 17th July. In this paper we will briefly discuss about this fact along with ISO's rating process.
The announcement of the reevaluation of Charleston Fire Department's, in South Carolina, Insurance Ratings had been made on 17th July 2007, after the blaze in the Sofa Super Store on 18th June.
According to an ISO, an independent American agency, official, previously the department had got the ISO Class I ranking, the highest possible ranking for any fire department.
In the United States of America, nearly 50 departments presently have got the ISO Class I ranking. However, the Fire department's service office, which was used to determine the home fire insurance and business premiums, had been reevaluated.
The ISO provides information regarding risks to the insurance regulators, insurance companies and fire departments. The ISO staffs survey the fire protection efforts by the municipalities of the respective cities across the United States. According to the information gathered by that survey, the rating, from 1 to 10, is usually done.
In 1997, ISO rated Charleston as no. 1, which signifies the availability of full fire protection system, based on its above mentioned ranking method.
However, this method has been changing periodically over the last decade. ISO mainly examines the water availability for fighting with fire and the fire department's, of a city, operational readiness while setting these rankings.
Majority of the properties in Charleston qualified for the ISO Class I rating in 1997, for they were within a thousand feet of a fire hydrant. Normally, properties, which stay over 1,000 feet from a fire hydrant, get the Class IX rating. There were some Class IX properties in Charleston at that time.
However, the Vice President of ISO’ risk decision services told that one accident would not change the ISO ranking for a city. But still the organization would go for a reevaluation.