City Receives Highest Fire Protection Classification

The Insurance Services Office (ISO) reclassified the City of Richmond Department of Fire and Emergency Services as an ISO Class 1, their highest awarded classification in February 2018.

Of the nearly 45,000 Public Fire Protection Districts in the United States, only 270 are ISO Class I and only seven are located in Virginia. This puts Richmond in the top 1 percent for fire protection in the nation.

ISO collects and evaluates information on municipal fire-protection efforts in communities throughout the United States. ISO then assigns a Public Protection Classification from 1 to 10. Class 1 represents superior property fire protection and Class 10 does not meet the minimum requirements of protection.

ISO evaluates a community's fire protection, emergency communications, municipal water supply system, and community risk reduction efforts. The city's fire hydrants are maintained by the Department of Public Utilities.

A community's investment in fire protection is a reliable predictor of future fire losses. Insurance companies use ISO classification information to help establish premiums for fire insurance. Communities with better protection generally are offered lower premiums.

Richmond Gas Works Breaks Record

Kent Foley monitors the demand for natural gas throughout Richmond and Henrico

On Sunday, January 7, 2018, the predicted low temperature was -3 degrees, but in Natural Gas Control Manager Kent Foley’s truck, the temperature gauge was reading -7.

He had two crews on standby that Sunday morning, ready to roll if the natural gas distribution system developed any safety issues. Back in the 1980s, before all the system improvements and replacements were made, if the predicted low for the day was 28 degrees, a crew had to go out at 4 a.m. to manually ensure there would be enough pressure in the valves. If the temperature was 24 degrees, they started at midnight.

Now, without the need for a crew to manually adjust the pressure, the automated system broke a new record, sending out 190,000 decatherms (dth). The previous record was in February 2015 with 183,000 dth.

(A decatherm is a unit of energy used to measure natural gas equal to 1 million BTUs [British Thermal Units]).

Foley, who has been on the job for 32 years, said, “A typical send-out on a cold day would have been 90,000.” If the record low temperature had been reached on a Monday instead of Sunday, the send-out would have been even greater because commercial demand increases on weekdays, and residential users use more natural gas earlier on weekday mornings than they do on weekends.

The increase in natural gas demand in January was a combination of low temperatures and more customers, brought on by DPU’s expansion into developing areas of Henrico County. Westgate is currently the biggest load station. A new station was recently built at Staples Mill and Hungary Road in Glen Allen, connected to the one at Woodman and Hungary roads.

“We’re always trying to get more gas to the West End,” Foley said. As the customer base expands there, and new commercial business is added on the Southside, expect more records to be broken.