By Michael Lamendola
The Daily Gazette
ALBANY, N.Y. — The city of Gloversville’s fire protection rating has been downgraded by the Insurance Services Office based on the lack of a ladder truck, aging infrastructure and other factors, according to a fire official.
The city is the third municipality in Fulton County to see its fire protection rating drop this year. The other two are the villages of Northville and Broadalbin. Northville went from a Class 4 to a Class 5. Broadalbin’s is scheduled to change from Class 4 to Class 5; the village has six months to make changes before the change takes effect.
Gloversville Fire Department Battalion Chief Thomas Groff said the rating went down a notch, from Class 3 to Class 4, with Class 10 signifying rural areas with little or no fire protection, following a comprehensive survey of the city’s firefighting capabilities.
Insurance companies use the classification to calculate premiums. The higher the class, the more likely fire insurance will cost more, according to the ISO website.
The ISO looked at Gloversville’s fire equipment, staffing and training, the city’s water supply and the communication system to report fires, assigning credits of 50, 40 and 10 to each section. The Daily Gazette was unable to obtain Gloversville’s ISO report to see the actual ratings for each category. The ISO said the report is proprietary and said the municipality should release it. Mayor Dayton King did not return a phone call for comment. Ward One Councilwoman Robin Wentworth said she saw a memo two weeks ago discussing the downgrade, but had no details on the ISO report.
Groff, who has seen the report, said the department’s lack of a working ladder truck, able to reach structures 35 feet and higher, affected the city’s rating. The ISO assigns a credit of five points to fire departments that have ladder service. This represents 10 percent of the total score in this category.
The department has a 110-foot aerial ladder truck, but it has been out of service since November.
“The city does not want to buy a ladder truck and it affects the ISO,” Groff said.
Wentworth said the city cannot afford to buy a new ladder truck, although it has tried to purchase one through grants. “If the city had $850,000, the city would have a ladder truck,” she said.
Groff also said the ISO report also faulted the city’s water supply system and the county’s centralized dispatch services.
The ISO said a community served by three engine companies, which is the size of the Gloversville Fire Department, should have a basic fire flow of 3,000 to 3,500 gallons per minute. Groff said the department has three 1,500-gpm pumpers and is seeking to replace the ladder truck with a quint, which has both ladder and engine capabilities as well as a 2,000 gpm pump.
Groff said the county’s centralized dispatch system, operated by the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department, is understaffed for the volume of calls it handles annually. He also said the city needs to update its water system to reach ISO standards. Both would require a substantial investment in tax dollars.
“It is a thing with the whole country with aging infrastructure. The municipalities don’t have the money, but the ISO is making this determination,” Groff said.
According to the ISO report for Northville, which is available to the public, the Fulton County dispatch center should have six operators on duty at all times, based on a call volume of 50,001 to 100,000 calls annually. Fulton County has 3.5 operators on staff.
Capt. Garth Hillier, who is in charge of the dispatch system, called the ISO standard “skewed for this community. We do not have six available work stations to employ six people,” he said. He added that the county dispatch center takes in fewer than 50,000 calls annually. “I think we are doing the best we can with what we have. The state standard to receive funding is to have two people in the dispatch center at all times,” he said.
The center has a staff of three people from 2 a.m. to 2 p.m, each day and four at its busiest between 2 p.m. and 2 a.m., based on call volume, Hillier said.
As for the training standards of the Gloversville Fire Department, as measured by ISO, Groff said “the city has changed our training regime to get credit, but it is still not enough to change the rating.”
Groff said the fire departments elsewhere in the county “have done all they can to improve their ratings, but ISO changed some of their rating requirements. We made changes but not enough to change the grade.”
Copyright 2012 The Daily Gazette Co.
All Rights Reserved