Excerpts from foxillinois.com:

The Champaign Fire Department is now one of the best departments in the nation. This week they [received a] Class One rating, the highest of ten, by the Insurance Services Office or ISO and they are representing the rating with an ISO emblem on their trucks.

They rank in the top 200 departments of 48,000 nationwide.

“That’s why we exist,” Champaign Fire Chief Gary Ludwig said. “We are here to take care of the citizens of Champaign. We’re very excited about that, we’re going to go for an ISO 1. We are up again for reevaluation in the next three or four years. We can get an even better score.”

The score is based on things like training, operations, water flow and communications.

This is the first time the Champaign Fire Department ranked Class One since its inception nearly 150 years ago.