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South County Fire has maintained a Protection Class 3 rating by the Washington Surveying and Rating Bureau (WSRB). The rating, among the top 15% in the state, applies to communities served by South County Fire including Brier, Edmonds, Lynnwood, Mill Creek, Mountlake Terrace and unincorporated southwest Snohomish County, the fire authority said in a news release.
WSRB ratings range from Class 1 to 10, with 1 being the best rating. Protection class ratings are used by most insurance companies to help determine property insurance rates and risks. A lower rating may allow insurance companies to offer lower rates based on the fire department’s ability to extinguish fires more quickly and effectively.
“This is an important classification for us to maintain, as it can directly impact the rates our residents pay for property insurance,” said Fire Chief Bob Eastman. “We are committed to providing the highest quality of protection for the communities we serve.”
How does the WSRB determine ratings? The WSRB evaluates the effort a community has made to provide fire-protection services. Factors include:
– Fire department — distribution of fire stations, engine and ladder companies, pumping capacity, apparatus maintenance, staffing and training.
– Water supply — capacity, distribution and maintenance of water systems and fire hydrants.
– Fire safety control — fire code enforcement and fire safety education activities.
– Emergency communication — evaluation of the community’s 911 system used to dispatch the fire department.
South County Fire first achieved a Class 3 rating in 2014, when the agency was known as Fire District 1, and has maintained that rating since.
Maintaining a Class 3 rating is the minimum acceptable standard for metropolitan cities nowadays. My question is why hasn’t the RFA improved on that rating over the last ten years? I thought the whole point of joining the RFA was to improve services through an economy of scales argument. The RFA has grown considerably over the last ten years, however I’m hard pressed to see how services have improved in any of the joining municipalities. So tell me again why I should pay nearly double by joining the RFA for the same level of service with no improvement in sight?
It would be interesting to do the research on home insurance rates at different classes of service. Given a class 3 rating today how would moving to class 4 or class 2 change our rates. To a tax payer they have an insurance premium and a tax for fire svc. Could we save total cost by going up or down?
EMS service is also important. Are there “classes” for these services as well?
The upcoming questions of joining the RFA should be data driven. At this point council does not have reliable data for either Fire or EMS. They can speculate all they want but we should make a data driven decision on both.
Darrol is absolutely right. Class of service ratings don’t mean much unless there is some measurable difference in response rates, reduction in fires or deaths, reduction in fire insurance, cost vs. benefit analysis, etc. Why is the Council not demanding more operational and cost data from the RFA? Why have the City’s consultants been unable to show how fire/ems service costs should be reduced over time given that 85% of all 911 calls are medical emergencies – that do not require firefighter response? Why has the City relied on biased consultants who do nothing but support the broken RFA business model that relies on annexation to increase their revenues and avoid meaningful cost control? Why has the Council not pursued the market data that shows fire/ems operations can be managed much more efficiently than the RFA has done. (Sunnyvale, CA; Placentia, CA; Watertown, NY; and others). Why has the RFA not managed the ever escalating union wages and overtime that should be managed to COL and population growth metrics? Since the RFA can’t show any improvement in performance data re their chronic unjustified increases in costs to Edmonds’ residents – 50% increase between 2019 and 2023, and an announced 65% increase between 2024 and 2026 – and no improvement in Class rating? Neither the Council nor the RFA puts taxpayers first.
This home insurance hype is just another bogus fear mongering load of nonsense from our SCF/RFA paternalistic protectors of all that’s good in the world. Both my home and car insurance have already shot up lately, simply because insurance companies are having larger claim volumes and houses and cars have more value, more expensive high technology and cost more money to fix. They have to make a profit and this has little to do with how soon the fire truck arrives, especially since fire call volume has been on a down trend for 30 years while the number of firefighters has been on an uptrend for the same period. This simply does not compute.