Utica wants to flush insurance costs down the drain

Do you live in Utica and have you seen crews working on village fire hydrants? They are trying to keep you safe — and lower your insurance premiums, too.

The Utica fire and water departments are flushing and doing routine maintenance — that goes on all the time — but they’re also doing a study on how each village hydrant (more than 130) is performing. Emergency water access is factored into a rating system that insurers use to set premiums.

Once the data are in and a few corrections are made, Utica could boost its hydrant performance to where insurers take note and, perhaps, favorably adjust the premiums on residential and commercial properties.

Utica Fire Chief Ben Brown said it’s a collaboration between the fire protection district and the village, specifically the water department, which are separately managed but nonetheless have worked well together.

“We’ve built a good groundwork and we just keep building on it,” Brown said.

Emergency water access is of interest to both because it is subject to a periodic review by the Insurance Services Office, which rates a municipality’s emergency services on a 10-point scale, with 1 being the best.

Utica currently sits at ISO class 5, but it isn’t stuck there. The ISO rating considers numerous variables that can be analyzed and corrected to help Utica move closer to a coveted low score.

“There’s only a tiny number of departments in the country that have scores of 1,” Brown said. “We’ll never get there, but if we play our numbers the right way and get to a 3, it will be huge.”

Fire hydrants, specifically, don’t all perform at the same level, so fixing the least-efficient lines and hydrants can boost the system as a whole.

The village and fire district brought in Flow MSP, a Streator company that helps fire departments pre-plan for disaster, to conduct an analysis. They want to see if Utica can raise its rating and, in turn, lower its premiums. Jason Marvel, chief executive officer of Flow MSP, thinks they can do both.

“Utica is an ISO class 5, but they are a high 5 and they have a chance to go to a 4,” Marvel said. “They could even bump to a 3 which is unheard of for a small department like Utica.”

Routine flushing and maintenance will help boost performance, but Marvel is helping the village fire and water departments to conduct two-hydrant flow tests to compute the gallons per minute available from every village fire hydrant.

In an era when fire calls are rising and volunteers are scarce, that’s pivotal information.

“The important thing is the fire department will not be guessing the availability of water,” Marvel said. “They’ll know their water supply even before they reach the scene.”

The manual inspections, maintenance and measurements will be continued through Nov. 3. Meanwhile, Marvel and his team will about a week to make the computations — it’s mostly algebra — and either submit the new data to ISO or seeking funding opportunities to make any major fixes.

Though all this is happening on the heels of a massive fire at Grand Bear Resort at Starved Rock, Marvel said the historic fire did not set the proverbial wheels in motion.

“I don’t think the Grand Bear incident had a direct effect,” he said. “This process happens every five years whether there’s an incident like Grand Bear or not.”

Nevertheless, Grand Bear underscored the need for pre-planning and to ensure the lines and hydrants are performing at peak efficiency. The resort isn’t served by hydrants and firefighters from 57 companies had to use 40 tankers to haul in water. Hard figures are elusive, but the Utica Fire Department conservatively estimated 5 million gallons of water were trucked in.