Subscription Fire Service
Dear neighbor,
We want to make sure you are aware of an alternative opportunity to have fire service for your property.
You should be aware that the petition effort to form a Fairbanks North Star Borough Fire Service Area failed for the third time in 2009. The most glaring reason for the failure was an overwhelming aversion to the anticipated increase in property taxes required to support a classic fire service area.
Since then, Salcha Fire and Rescue (SFR) has explored alternatives for our community and is offering rural fire service to private property by subsciption. This is a typical type of service for newly formed Volunteer Fire Departments in rural areas, such as ours. Our Fire Department is modeled after a successful subscription fire service in Chikaloon, a rural community similar to ours near Palmer, Alaska.
This is not a FNSB or governmental program. It is managed by SFR, a non-profit corporation that has successfully provided award-winning EMS service to this community since 1982. Our subscribers are supporters of our community fire department and share the operating expenses with an annual subscription cost of $150 per residence, which goes directly to fire department operations and support. In return, we will provide a volunteer fire response to their private property on-call. We have limited resources. We cannot afford, and hence do not provide a firefighting response to private property of those who are not subscribers.
Subscription is available to anyone with property in the Salcha-Harding Lake-Birch Lake areas. The subscription year is 1 July 2011-30 June 2012.
You should know that we are a registered fire department with the State of Alaska, we have 2 fire trucks, are trained volunteer firefighters, and have a mutual aid agreement with an adjacent Fire Department to help us out. You should know that as a new department, our firefighters will be initially certified for exterior firefighting operations, and we will rely on our mutual aid partners should we need interior operations. As we gain experience, additional training and equipment over the coming year, we plan to have a cadre of interior certified firefighters in our own department. We will apply for an ISO rating for our department on 1 July and will be ready for an evaluation based on their scheduling constraints. A favorable ISO rating has historically resulted in Fire Insurance discounts, if you use an insurance company that uses ISO rating as part of their premium calculation.
If you need more information, call us at 488-5274.
***It is important to note that members of our community have a choice in this matter. They can choose to subscribe, or not. HOWEVER, if a property owner chooses not to subscribe, they should not expect a fire response to their private property from SFR. Since all funding is derived from our subscribers, we have limited resources. Again, we cannot afford to use the fire service that they pay for, to fight a fire at a residence of a homeowner that chooses to not pay to support the fire response program. This is NOT an FNSB fire service area, like other areas in our Borough.