With its newest station open as of Aug. 25, the Cy-Fair Volunteer Fire Department is in line for a rating increase from the Insurance Service Office, also known as the ISO. At an Aug. 16 meeting of the Harris County Emergency Services District No 9—the governing body that manages the CFVFD budget—Fire Chief Amy Ramon said she got word from the ISO in August that the department will improve from a Class 3 to a Class 2 rating. The ISO is an advisory organization that evaluates and provides ratings to more than 49,000 fire departments across the U.S. “We’ve been working on our ISO survey since last year,” Ramon said at the meeting. “The department spent countless hours on it.” The rating will not go into effect until the department receives notice from the State Fire Marshal’s Office with the official approval, Ramon said, adding that it is not clear when that notice will be issued. ISO ratings for public protection classification, or PPC, have been considered the standard for evaluating fire protection services for decades, Ramon said. The new rating reflects the department’s improved fire protection, including fire department operations, emergency communications, water supply and community risk reduction, she said. The opening of CFVFD’s 13th station on Westgreen Boulevard in Bridgeland, provided a boost to the department’s status, Ramon said. The 19,000-square-foot, $5 million station will be critical to providing timely services to the western end of the district’s 155-square-mile coverage area, she said. Bridgeland officials project roughly 17,000 new homes to be built in the community over the next decade. CFVFD’s next closest station is Station 11, about 5 miles away on West Road. “[Station 13] absolutely improved [our] coverage to our community,” Ramon said via email. The station is equipped with an ambulance, engine truck, ladder truck, and two additional bays in preparation for future growth. A department’s PPC rating can affect homeowner insurance premiums within the communities it serves, according to the Texas Department of Insurance. However, individual insurance providers ultimately determine how much of a factor ratings play. “Some [insurance] companies may not use ISO, but for those that do, they assign a rating factor to each classification,” Ramon said. “If a community’s PPC improves, in general, the premiums insurers charge will decrease.” The most significant benefit of the PPC program is its effect on fire losses, Ramon said. “The better the fire protection, the lower the fire losses,” she said. “This results in lower insurance rates.” Ramon said she would eventually like to have the department achieve a Class 1 rating but said it is more of a longer-term goal. “Eventually that would be nice, but we have too much undeveloped territory in our district for that right now,” she said.