When Warren County Emergency Management joined with Pennsylvania in a weather exercise last month, all but one of the county’s all-hazards sirens were activated.

One might say it was an equipment problem.

At a recent meeting of the Local Emergency Planning Committee, Public Safety Director Ken McCorrison said all of the sirens — with one exception — activated as expected.

“We finally have these to where we’re not having breakdowns,” McCorrison said. “The only one that did not activate in the county was Columbus.”

It wasn’t a breakdown.

“They removed their siren capability,” he said.

The sirens are intended to inform anyone nearby of some widespread potential danger — a tornado or other serious weather event being the most likely — and encourage them to seek shelter and then look for more information.

“I would like to see an all-hazard siren back on top of that building in the near future,” McCorrison said.

It looks like the Public Safety Fair will make its return this fall.

“It is the opinion of the staff at public safety that we would like to move forward with that this year.” McCorrison said. “I think it makes sense… the whole purpose of the LEPC is to educate the public on hazardous materials and hazards within the community. I would like to move forward with public safety fair and see that support by LEPC.”

“We’re in a much better spot (related to COVID-19),” LEPC Chairman Joe Sproveri said. “It’s an outdoor event. If we skip it two years in a row, it might not regain traction.”

The group approved moving forward and providing its support to the event. It is typically held on the second weekend in September and the group will be investigating locations.

The committee would also like to put on some training events.

“We had started pushing for some training out of the LEPC,” McCorrison said.

The first scheduled class – hazardous materials operations – had to be canceled due to a limited number of registrants, he said.

“We’re going to continue to try and push the training,” McCorrison said. “We can’t do enough of it within the county. We’ll attempt to get that rescheduled and hopefully generate some interest.”