The Miami County Communication Center is looking at a possible software upgrade that would activate electronically weather-warning sirens countywide, Jeff Busch, center director said.

Busch discussed steps being considered with the center board March 26.

He also said the center staff and contractors have been unable to determine why the Troy warning sirens did not go off during a severe storm Feb. 20.

A review of the system and activation procedures failed to pinpoint the cause of the failure.

Busch explained that to activate the Troy sirens a multi-channel radio has to be manually changed.

The system does not track where the radio channel is set at any given time so verification was not possible. However, the supervisor on duty who manually activated the sirens “is confident that the correct procedures were followed,” he said.

WS Electronics also was asked to conduct tests to see if there possibly was a problem with the series of tones sent out to activate the sirens. Nothing was found to indicate there had been a problem, Busch said.

The staff was not aware that the sirens were not activated. That’s because sirens cannot be heard in the center building due to the distance of the closest siren combined with the dispatch room noise and concentration on tasks at hand, Busch said.

A federal signal informer has been purchased by the center. This sends out an audible tone inside the center to notify those working that the signal for the Troy sirens did go out.

Patrick Titterington, Troy’s service and safety director and a center board member, asked when the siren issue would be resolved. He asked to be notified when that is achieved.

Busch said work is under way on adjusting various signal volumes to see if the electronic activation can be used countywide.

The volume affects not only transmission of signals to various siren systems but also radio-based pagers used by volunteer fire departments. Some fire department pagers likely will have to be reprogrammed.

Busch said hopes are the issue would be resolved by the next monthly siren test. The sirens are tested the second Wednesday of each month.