Fire decision will cost county residents
When the county switches to covering Desert Blume and Dunmore with a volunteer fire force, once its services agreement with the city lapses in December, insurance rates in those communities will go up, says Canadian accredited insurance broker Gord Cowan of Cowan Agencies Ltd.
“Fire insurance is calculated based on three primary things. No. 1, is it hydrant-protected? The second one is semi-protected, and the last class would be unprotected.”
According to Cowan, “hydrant-protected” is merely a term the industry uses to explain the insured home is within 300 metres of a working fire hydrant and is protected by a full-time fire service within eight to 15 kilometres away, depending on the insurer’s standards. Semi-protected means there are no hydrants, but the community is covered by a fire hall within eight to 15 km. Unprotected means the fire hall is more than 15 km away.
“In Desert Blume, that’s going to change it quite significantly when the county moves to a volunteer service there,” states Cowan. “If they exceed the requirement for a protected one, and go to semi-protected, they are going to see significant increases to their property insurance. Depending on the insurance company, I would expect 15-30 per cent would be my estimate.”
Cowan says it also makes a difference to the insurance rates that Desert Blume would now be protected by a volunteer fire department alone.
“Right on the application it says: Is your property protected by a full-time fire department or volunteer fire department? If you click off volunteer, you are going to have higher rates. Volunteer versus full-time trumps fire hydrant availability, and the rates go up.” Cowan explains further. “It’s fine to have those fire hydrants but if there isn’t anybody to hook onto them it doesn’t help the homeowner any (for insurance purposes). The industry doesn’t give the same risk factor to a volunteer that they would to fulltime fire department. The volunteer is always higher.”
Cowan predicts Dunmore rates will also rise.
“They can put a fire hall there but because of the fact it is a volunteer fire department, it is not going to generate lower premiums.”
Cowan says it is difficult to estimate how much Dunmore homeowners’ rates may go up, but it is a near certainty they will.
“What will happen is the industry will look at it and get a bunch of data collected, and they will be able to determine the amount of increase risk of changing from a fulltime, responding fire hall from Medicine Hat to a volunteer firefighting-system. It’s hard to put a number on it, but it’s safe to say if there is increased risk, there will be increased premiums.”