A city official has been suspended and residents are still reeling after a deadly tornado tore through St. Louis, killing five people and exposing critical failures in the city’s emergency response.
Ahead of the devastating Friday evening storm, the city’s Emergency Management Director, Sarah Russell, failed to activate tornado sirens, leaving residents unprepared and vulnerable.
The City Emergency Management Agency (CEMA) director has since been placed on paid administrative leave, Mayor Cara Spencer announced on Tuesday, saying she wanted to ‘provide accountability’ after the life-saving alerts weren’t deployed.
In a statement, Spencer said CEMA failed to ‘alert the public to dangers.’
‘Commissioner Russell has served our city for years and is a person of goodwill, but I cannot move on from this without providing accountability and ensuring that our emergency management is in trusted hands,’ the mayor said.
Spencer said an internal investigation into the siren failure revealed ‘multiple’ issues, prompting her decision to seek an external investigation of CEMA.
She pointed to various details in the Tuesday release, including a malfunctioning button in the Fire Department to set off sirens.
Hellbound and Down 