City hoping for better fire rating

Published 6:50 pm Friday, July 29, 2016

The Washington Fire-Rescue-EMS Department wants its next inspection by the Office of the State Fire Marshal to result in a new fire rating, one that could save property owners in the city money on their fire-insurance premiums.

Currently, the city has a 5 rating. Ratings run from 1 to 10, with a 1 being the best rating. Inspections, performed by the ratings and inspections division of the OSFM, determine if fire departments meet the minimum fire-protection criteria developed by the North Carolina Department of Insurance. A 10 rating means a department is not recognized as a certified fire department by the state.

After it’s last inspection, the fire department began addressing issues discovered during that inspection, Mark Yates, the city’s fire marshal, told the City Council during its meeting Monday. During its last inspection, the department was advised to improve how it records and reports fire training information and the amount of equipment sent to a fire. In the past, the city considered the aerial platform it used to own as a pumper also. The state said that apparatus could be classified as either an aerial platform or a pumper, not both. Now that the aerial platform is gone, the city sends a pumper to fires to meet the state requirements, according to Yates. Within the past 12 months, the department has acquired two new fire engines.

Yates and City Manager Bobby Roberson expressed confidence the city will receive a better fire rating after the next inspection. A new inspection might not happen until late 2017 or in early 2018, Yates said. “We’re ready,” said Yates, adding the department has adequately addressed the issues raised in its last inspection. “I’m shooting for a 3,” Roberson told the council.

As for inspections of fire departments, North Carolina is transitioning from the Insurance Service Office rating system to the North Carolina Response Rating Schedule, an emergency-response evaluation system used by the North Carolina Department of Insurance. NCRRS will be at least as stringent as ISO, according to the OSFM website. Under NCRRS, inspections will be performed at least every five years.

 

About Mike Voss

Mike Voss is the contributing editor at the Washington Daily News. He has a daughter and four grandchildren. Except for nearly six years he worked at the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va., in the early to mid-1990s, he has been at the Daily News since April 1986.
Journalism awards:
• Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service, 1990.
• Society of Professional Journalists: Sigma Delta Chi Award, Bronze Medallion.
• Associated Press Managing Editors’ Public Service Award.
• Investigative Reporters & Editors’ Award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Public Service Award, 1989.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Investigative Reporting, 1990.
All those were for the articles he and Betty Gray wrote about the city’s contaminated water system in 1989-1990.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Investigative Reporting, 1991.
• North Carolina Press Association, Third Place, General News Reporting, 2005.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Lighter Columns, 2006.
Recently learned he will receive another award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Lighter Columns, 2010.
4. Lectured at or served on seminar panels at journalism schools at UNC-Chapel Hill, University of Maryland, Columbia University, Mary Washington University and Francis Marion University.

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