Foley, Ala. — (OBA) — Fire protection in Foley has gotten better over the past few years, even though firefighters are answering more calls than before. A national study showed that the city's fire service has improved. Mayor Ralph Hellmich said the higher score proves Foley’s firefighters are doing a great job under growing pressure. He credited Chief Joey Darby and the entire department for their work in keeping the community safe.

“This is well-earned,” Hellmich said. “We appreciate it. I know you all work hard. You've worked hard in the time you've been here. This is a very professional group, and we appreciate your hard work.”

The improved rating came from the Insurance Services Organization, or ISO, which reviews fire departments across the country. Chief Darby said Foley was last reviewed by ISO in 2018.

The ISO rates fire departments on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being the best possible fire protection and 10 being no fire protection. Foley’s ISO rating is 3. Darby said the department 2018 rating of 3 was based on a grade of 71. He said a 3 is a very high rating for a department of Foley’s size that covers as large an area as large as the city’s fire jurisdiction.

Darby said some local fire departments have a better rating than 3, but do not cover as large an area.

Since 2018, the number of emergency fire calls increased 75% in Foley. The population grew from about 20,000 in the 2020 census to about 30,000 currently.

Even with the increased demands, the study found that the quality of fire protection in Foley increased significantly, Darby said. He said that while the rating remains a 3, the overall grade increased by almost 10%.

“I’m very, very pleased to tell you that our point value went up significantly,” Darby told City Council members. “We're at 78.08 which puts us less than two points away from Class 2. Quite frankly, the last time we were surveyed, I would have said that a Class 2 was mathematically impossible for the city of Foley, just because of the geographical area that we were responding to.”

The chief said the department’s score is due to the efforts by the entire staff of the Foley Fire Department to work on the survey and to provide Foley with exceptional fire protection.

Darby said the new study also compared Foley with other fire departments of a similar size. 

“This is the first time they've ever done this. It compares us to peer groups,” Darby said. “In other words, they take communities that are similar to Foley, similar in size, similar in population, similar in the size of the fire department, and they use that as the peer group. That's the comparison, I'm very proud of the fact that in every category on here, we far exceeded the peer group. So we exceeded the state average, the national average, and the peer group. There's a lot of effort that's gone into that.”

The ISO study examines all aspects of a department that could affect fire protection for residences. He said better ratings can mean lower fire insurance rates for homes.

They come in and they evaluate us from how we respond, to the apparatus that we have, to the equipment that we have, to the personnel that we have, how we train, how we prepare our community, and look at basically every function that we do as it relates to our ability to respond to structure fires,” Darby said. 

The study also looks at services outside a fire department that can affect fire protection.

“They also evaluate our water system, which includes Riviera and includes anybody else that supplies us water,” Darby said. “They evaluate the 911 system in how it handles the receiving and dispatching the calls.”

Education programs also helped Foley’s score.

“We're out there teaching people,” he told the council. “We're working with our schools. We're working with our senior citizens. The things that we do to prevent fires, including our code adoption that you guys do, and our enforcement of that code, gives us bonus points. We almost maxed out the number of bonus points. We’re very proud of that because that's to me, in a sense, it takes a lot of work to go into that, but that's low-hanging fruit without risking damage to our community.”