The Daily Journal has an article about the Kankakee Fire Department achieving an ISO Class 2 rating.
The department now is in the top 2 percent of all departments across the country based on its just-received rating classification from the national Insurance Service Office organization.
The 52-member department received an 80.76-point ISO rating in its Public Protection Classification, placing it in Class 2. Of the 2,408 Illinois fire departments, Kankakee is one of 63 with a Class 2 or Class 1 rating. Nationally, of the 47,242 rated departments, there only are 653 with such a high performance review.
Departments receive classifications from the top mark of Class 1 to the lowest mark of Class 10. Since at least 1985, the city had been rated Class 4.
The ratings are based on a score that not only looks at the fire department, its personnel, its equipment and its training, but also the department’s water provider, in this case Aqua Illinois, and its dispatching system, KANCOM.
In its previous two ISO ratings, the department scored 62.2 percent in 1982 and 67.1 percent in 2000. Since those rating, Young noted the countywide KANCOM dispatching system was implemented and the millions of dollars of updates have been made by Aqua.
Bradley is the only other municipal fire department in Kankakee County. Bradley’s department has a Class 4 ISO rating.
Mayor Nina Epstein said property insurance costs are such a large expense for business and industry that having a better ISO rating can mean lower insurance costs. That factor, in turn, she said, could help the city in not only retention of existing businesses, but recruitment of new companies.
“This rating is huge for industry. Companies are always looking for ways to control costs and this helps them do that,” the mayor said. “This only helps make our community more attractive. I like to say its another tool in our toolbox for bringing business here.”
The rating does not impact homeowners, Fire Chief Ron Young said.
“We felt confident we would get up to a Class 3, but we felt Class 2 was possible,” he said. “It’s very rare a department jumps two classes. We were ecstatic to get to a two.”
thanks Chris
