Most residents of Imboden simply write a check for the water bill they receive monthly and never really pay alot of attention to a one dollar charge added to the water bill for fire protection and those that do notice it have no idea just how much that dollar saves them.
In 1958, Lehman Hackworth, Eugene Jones, Jiggs Guthrie, Gene Dixon, Austin Stovall and others formed the Imboden Volunteer Fire Department with a 1939 Chevrolet open top fire truck purchased from the Valley Park Illinois Fire Department. Imboden was classed as an ISO-8 department. ISO is a rating system used by insurance companies to rate your fire protection between a 9 and a 1, the lower the number the better. In 2010 the Imboden Volunteer Fire Department led by Chief Chris Jones was awarded a Class 4 ISO rating for the City of Imboden, a rare achievement by a volunteer department in a town as small as Imboden.
We asked Kelly Durham of Shelter Insurance to do a rate comparison of what Imboden’s ISO-8 would cost compared to the current ISO-4. On a $60,000 home without contents the savings is 30%, which means hundreds of dollars in savings.
Imboden is in the top 15% of fire departments in the United States and ranks in the top 8% of the more than 1500 fire departments in Arkansas.
For more information on the Imboden Volunteer Fire Department visit the city website at www.imbodenarkansas.com .