Gordon’s ISO fire safety rating now the lowest possible

The Gordon Fire Department most recently “failed the minimum requirements to be recognized” by a nationwide fire safety ratings service, which isn’t great news for property owners.

That decision was reached by Verisk Analytics, the company tasked with assessing fire departments and assigning an Insurance Services Office (ISO) fire safety rating for communities across the country.

“Gordon Fire Department is not recognized,” Verisk wrote in a letter emailed to Mayor April Smith. In the header of the letter was an “effective date” of Aug. 1.

This subsequently makes Gordon’s ISO rating a Class 10, meaning that the city’s fire services failed to meet the minimum level of requirements to be recognized.

Fire Chief Nathan Cole’s name was on the agenda at last week’s City Council meeting, but Cole was not able to attend the meeting to offer updates to council members. The Times Journal Post’s repeated attempts to reach Cole were unsuccessful.

Added the email: “ISO’s Public Protection Classification Program (PPC) plays an important role in the underwriting process of insurance companies. In fact, most US. insurers – including the largest ones – use PPC information as part of the decision-making process…Each insurance company independently determines the premiums it charges its policyholders.”

The GFD long has had one employee — its chief — while overwhelmingly relying on volunteers. Like volunteer fire departments across the country, however, the GFD has had difficulty recruiting and maintaining volunteer firefighters. It’s become a generational thing, with older volunteer firefighters “aging out” without a new generation to replace them.

Then, there’s the logistics. Terry Eady was the longtime GFD chief, as well as a longtime city councilman.

“The amount of training is ridiculous. (Volunteer firefighters) are now required to receive 300-something hours of training, which is right up there with full-time firefighters. If you’re a young person, with a career and family of your own, that’s too much time out of your year,” he said. “The changes are going to have to come from the state level. The people in Atlanta will have to develop a system to make it easier for these different towns and counties to find good, quality (volunteer firefighters).”

Gordon’s new ISO rating certainly has nothing to do with equipment. At last count, the city of Gordon had more fire trucks (three) than volunteer firefighters and one fire truck for every 580 citizens.

In a perfect world, Eady said that Wilkinson County would have one centralized fire department and employ multiple full-time firefighters. This idea was tossed around several years ago, and a plot of land on the Fall Line Freeway between Gordon and Ivey was targeted as the possible location. Nothing ever materialized, however, and now Wilkinson County continues to rely overwhelmingly on a hodgepodge of city fire departments and rural fire stations.

“There are too many personalities involved and too many different people involved,” Eady said. “I just don’t see us being able to come together any time soon.”