Times Observer file photo An acid spill on Route 62 in North Warren that started in the City of Warren and caused numerous public safety, police, fire, and public works agencies to respond has encouraged the Warren County Local Emergency Planning Committee to reevaluate the amounts it charges the responsible parties for incident response.

In the wake of disbanding Warren County’s All-Hazards Team, the county and its Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC) are making changes.

The members of the LEPC discussed some of those changes at their meeting on Thursday.

Instead of having trucks carrying certified, operations-level personnel to incidents, Warren County and the LEPC will now provide equipment to help certified personnel deal with spills.

With proceeds from the recent sale of its vehicles, the entity approved a motion Thursday to purchase three 14-foot, enclosed trailers and stock each with absorbent pads, loose absorbent material, booms, and whatever other equipment is appropriate and will fit, Warren County Public Safety Director Ken McCorrison said.

The trailers would be staged at locations spread out around the county “so there are resources available” to the entities responding to incidents, he said. “The same equipment on each trailer and enough to take control of an incident.”

An additional trailer will be needed for responses related to the Allegheny River.

The LEPC has a boom ready for deployment from a shed at the Starbrick boat launch.

That’s fine, except it’s probably not far enough downstream, McCorrison said.

“We have a river boom pre-deployed,” McCorrison said. “If something’s going to happen in the river… it’s probably going to come from United Refinery.”

In the event of some kind spill, it is likely that the river would carry the material farther than Starbrick before the boom could be deployed, he said.

McCorrison said the LEPC will add a boom stored in a trailer “to get ahead of that.”

SIRENS

The LEPC is working with entities where all-hazards warning sirens did not activate during recent testing.

The siren in Columbus Township was deactivated prior to the test. “They may want to bring their all-hazards warning siren back on-line,” McCorrison said.

The LEPC approved of that step, even if the siren is not connected to Warren County’s system.

“Because Columbus and Corry are now one fire department, they feel it’s advantageous to have it connected to Erie County,” McCorrison said.

The rotating siren in the City of Warren did not engage for the first test, but did go off during a subsequent activation.

“We’ve engaged the Warren City Council to talk about replacing that,” McCorrison said. “We have provided some information about the cost.”

There is no all-hazards siren at Kinzua Dam.

“We recently did a table-top exercise with Seneca Power,” McCorrison said. “The dam siren is no longer active.”

He said the company may be willing to install an all-hazards siren at an off-site location — on Keenan Street, Mead Township, not far from the intersection of Routes 6 and 59.