Fire Departments across the country undergo a rating by the Insurance Services Office (ISO) approximately every ten years. ISO evaluates four primary categories to determine a City’s rating. Those categories consist of the Fire Department, Emergency Communication, Water Supply, and Community Risk Reduction.
With the assistance of the Council Bluffs Water Works and the Pottawattamie County 911 Communications Center, the City of Council Bluffs achieved a Class 2 community protection rating as of February 2013, an upgrade from a Class 3 previous rating. The Class 2 rating puts the City of Council Bluffs in the top 1% of departments in which ISO evaluates. Upon being last rated, our final score was 87.3 out of 105.5.
This score puts the city within 2.7 points of a Class 1 rating. Department members and staff are currently working through the rating schedule in an effort to obtain a Class 1 rating. Our primary goal is to provide the best level of service possible to our citizens. The ISO rating schedule is one way to judge how well we are providing those services.
For more information on ISO and the community protection classification service, visit the ISO Mitigation Website.