Celina Fire Dept. Working To Improve ISO Rating

The Celina Fire Department wants to improve the city’s Insurance Services Office rating.

The rating that directly correlates with the price of homeowners insurance recently went up to a 7 in Celina due to a lack of record keeping.

Celina Fire Department Chief Josh Wheeler said the latest ISO evaluation occurred in March of 2016.

“A lot of it was bad timing. During that time we had some members moving out of town or going out of town to find work, which resulted in our personnel count being down,” Wheeler said. “With all the confusion with the officer changes, we had a hard time obtaining personnel and training records. Another big thing was our water hydrant flow testing record. We didn’t have those records to show at the time.”

Wheeler said the department is working diligently to improve the rating. He said the department is testing and recording hydrant water flow in the city and now has 18 members rather than the six or seven active members during the last ISO evaluation.

“We’ve focused a lot of our energy on getting our new guys trained. Not only with fire code accredited classes, but we also meet two times a month to do in-house training,” Wheeler said. “We are doing a lot better job on recording these training hours so we can show them the next time we are evaluated.”

The ISO rate is based on a 1 to 10 scale, with 1 being the best rating and 10 the lowest. Celina currently has a rating of 7, but Wheeler said he’s confident that the number will improve upon the next visit from ISO.

“The city is doing a us a big favor of having those records accessible for us for when we need them,” he said. “I’m very confident that we are going to improve our score.”