Since the installation of the new municipal water system, the Wellfleet Fire Department has been working to improve the fire insurance rating for those areas of Town served by the water system.  Insurance Services Office, Inc. (ISO) rates a community on the effectiveness of its fire protection under their Public Protection Classification Program.  For many years, Wellfleet has been rated as an ISO Class 9, which recognizes a creditable fire department and dispatch center, but no creditable water supply.

With assistance from other Town departments and neighboring fire departments, and from Environmental Partners Group and Whitewater (the Town’s water system designer and operator), we’ve provided ISO with hundreds of pages of information relating to Fire Department equipment and operations, emergency call handling, the water supply system, and the characteristics of our community.  From this data, ISO has analyzed the effectiveness of our fire protection, and the good news is that areas served by the water system will now be rated as a Class 4.  This classification becomes effective on June 1, 2012, and will apply to properties within 5 miles of the fire station and within 1,000 feet of a fire hydrant.  The rest of the Town will remain at a Class 9, except for a few isolated properties which are more than 5 miles from a fire station. Neither the Fire Department nor the Town sets insurance rates, and insurance companies make their own decisions about how to use ISO ratings in setting insurance rates.

The Fire Department is pleased to have been successful in incorporating the new municipal water system and hydrants into our mission to protect lives and property, and to have achieved the goal of a better insurance rating that the new water system made possible.