Our homeowners policy just dropped about 25% from last year

[sweetapogee]

16. the rate is based on your ISO rating

It really doesn't matter if paid/volly services your district. They base fire rates on your ISO rating... response time (history), amount of water available, number of available personnel at any given time. My fire dist. has a ISO rating of something like 6.4 which is great for a semi-rural fire company. Our average response time is <10 minutes in much of the TWP. (we meet NFPA Standards), we have an initial response with 4000 gallons of water and we use compressed air foam. Another 3500 gallons is available by the time we run out. The biggest problem is that fires usually burn for quite some time before anyone notices it, unless someone is home at the time.

Response time will suffer if the available resources are in service for another call. We have been out on a call for something minor when a structure fire hit. It is many times faster and proper to call out mutual aid to handle the second call rather than drop everything and go to the more important call. Once you are dispatched you have to respond in order of dispatch, not degree of emergency.