Insurance Services Office (ISO)

What is an ISO rating?

A company called the ISO (Insurance Services Office) creates ratings for fire departments and their surrounding communities. The ratings calculate how well-equipped fire departments are to put out fires in that community.

The ISO provides this score (also known as an ISO fire score, an ISO fire insurance rating, and a Public Protection Classification [PPC]) to homeowners’ insurance companies, who then use it to help set homeowners’ insurance rates. The more well-equipped your fire department is to put out a fire, the less likely your house is to burn down. That makes your home less risky and, therefore, less expensive to insure.

PPCs can range from 1 to 10, and in the ISO rating scale, a lower number is better. A 1 is the best possible rating, while a 10 means the fire department did not meet the ISO's minimum requirements.

Using the credit points and various formulas, ISO calculates a total score on a scale of 0 to 105.5. According to the ISO's Fire Suppression Rating Schedule (FSRS), there are five main criteria to a fire rating score:

• 50% comes from the quality of your local fire department, including staffing levels, training, and proximity of the firehouse.
• 40% comes from the availability of water supply, including the prevalence of fire hydrants and how much water is available for putting out fires.
• 10% comes from the quality of the area's emergency communication systems (911).
• An extra 5.5% comes from community outreach, including fire prevention and safety courses.
• Any area that is more than 5 driving miles from the nearest fire station is automatically rated a 10.

How ISO Fire Ratings Impact Your Community

By classifying communities' ability to suppress fires, ISO helps communities evaluate and improve their public fire protection services. The program also provides an objective, countrywide standard that helps fire departments plan and budget for facilities, equipment, and training.

In addition, this grading schedule plays an important role in the underwriting process at insurance companies. ISO documents state that most insurers — including the largest ones — use PPC information for underwriting and calculating premiums for residential, commercial, and industrial properties.

What is the ISO rating for Medina County ESD 1?

As of 2022 Medina County ESD 1 had a split class rating.  The City of La Coste is a 5, City of Castroville is a 7, any unicorporated area that is within 5 miles of a fire station is a 9 and anything beyond 5 miles of a fire station is a 10.

In February of 2023 Medina County ESD 1 conducted a regrade of the whole District and were able to improve the scores to City of La Coste and Castroville to a Class 4, all unicorporated areas within 5 miles of Stations in Rio Medina, La Coste and Castroville are now a Class 5 with NO-Hydrant requirement due to the deparments ability to display how we can bring the appropriate amount of water on tender trucks to fires. 

While it may take sometime for the systems to update with the new scoring, we encourage property owners to print the attached letters and send to their insurance agents and if there are any questions they can contact our office.