An ISO fire rating is a score provided to fire departments and insurance companies by the Insurance Services Office (ISO). The score reflects how prepared an area and communities are for fires. While it mainly focuses on the local fire departments and water supply, there are other factors that contribute to an area’s score.

An ISO can greatly affect the insurance premium of every homeowner in an area and ca even cause an insure to deny you coverage in some circumstances.

The ISO is on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being the best and 10 the worst. The fire district is the biggest factor influencing this rating. Many things can be done by the district to improve the rating such as hiring paid staff for quicker out the door responses, upgrading the age of apparatus and equipment, adding more equipment and personnel, all of which can improve the score but the hardest to improve is an area’s water supply. A lack of fire hydrants and access to an adequate amount of water cannot be easily remedied and would require extensive infrastructure development to fix.

The district has an ISO score of 4 in areas that are within 1000 feet of a hydrant.