Mayor Cara Spencer Places CEMA Commissioner on Leave, Releases Documents and Audio Regarding Siren Failure

Today, Mayor Cara Spencer is moving to place CEMA Commissioner Sarah Russell on paid administrative leave pending a full external investigation into the actions of the City Emergency Management Agency on Friday, including the failure of the outdoor warning siren system.

After learning of the failure of the sirens to be activated, Mayor Spencer immediately ordered an internal investigation. The initial focus was to correct the immediate issue, which Mayor Spencer did by changing the siren activation protocol to clearly place the responsibility of activating the sirens with the Fire Department. However, as the investigation continued, it became increasingly clear that there was not just one serious issue, but multiple. The mayor has directed her staff to initiate an external investigation to fully explore this and any other potential issues.

Friday afternoon, CEMA staff, including Russell, were at a workshop at 1520 Market St. and were not at the CEMA office located at 1915 Olive St., where CEMA’s siren activation button is located, despite anticipated storms. As a result, when a tornado warning was issued, Russell or other CEMA staff could not personally activate the siren, and Russell contacted the Fire Department.

At that point, there was a breakdown in communication. The directive to activate the sirens was ambiguous, which cannot happen when a tornado is sweeping through our City and St. Louisans’ safety depends on being alerted immediately.

The Mayor’s Office is releasing the recording of that conversation with this release.

“CEMA exists, in large part, to alert the public to dangers caused by severe weather, and the office failed to do that in the most horrific and deadly storm our City has seen in my lifetime.” said Mayor Spencer. “Commissioner Russell has served our City for years and is a person of good will, but I cannot move on from this without providing accountability and ensuring that our emergency management is in trusted hands.”

Mayor Spencer will be available for comment at a press briefing on Wednesday, May 21, at 9 a.m. at Engine House 28, 4810 Enright Avenue.

Starting tonight, Captain John Walk with the St. Louis Fire Department will lead CEMA until a permanent commissioner has been found.

Wednesday morning, additional incident management response support will be provided by Metro West Fire Protection District Division Chief Michael D. Thiemann. Thiemann was the team manager of the Missouri Region C Incident Response Team during the 2022 floods.

Following the failure to activate the sirens, Mayor Spencer signed an executive order Tuesday morning to overhaul the siren activation protocol in order to avoid similar failures in the future. Under the new protocol, the Fire Department alone will be responsible for activating the siren, which will be done at an office that is staffed at all times.

The Mayor’s Office is now releasing documents and an audio recording of the phone call between Russell and the Fire Department to provide the public with a more complete understanding of what went wrong on Friday.

“The failure to activate the siren during a tornado has rightfully angered St. Louisans, including myself,” said Mayor Spencer. “While my first priority on this issue was to make sure this can never happen again, our community deserves full transparency and accountability.”

A standard operating procedure for activating the siren system, which appears to have been drafted in 2021 by Russell but which may never have been fully implemented, is released in full and states, in part:

“The outdoor warning siren system is to be activated at the primary activation point, the Fire Alarm Office at St. Louis Fire Department Headquarters. If the activation cannot be completed at the primary activation point immediate contact must be made with the Commissioner of CEMA to activate the system from the secondary or tertiary activation points.”

However, the de facto protocol for siren activation was that CEMA would activate the system or, if unable, immediately contact the Fire Department, which would then activate the sirens. Adding to the confusion, the outdoor warning siren fact sheet posted on the CEMA web page states, in part:

“Current policy dictates that the sirens are activated for a:

• National Weather Service issued Tornado Warning
• National Weather Service issued Severe Thunderstorm Warning which has been designated DESTRUCTIVE
• The system may also be activated by direct order of the Commissioner of Emergency Management for any other imminent threat to any portion of the City of St. Louis.

Sirens in the City of St. Louis are activated at Fire Department Dispatch Center or the City Emergency Management Agency.”

With the mayor’s executive order, this lack of clarity has now been eliminated.

In an effort to ensure that the siren system will work when it is needed next, the Fire Department tested the sirens today. In this test, it was learned that the button located at the Fire Department was not functioning, and the Fire Department instead activated the system from the CEMA office. Work to repair the button began Tuesday afternoon and is expected to be completed within days. Until the button has been repaired, a Fire Department personnel member will be placed at CEMA 24 hours a day to activate the siren if needed. Once the Fire Department button has been repaired, the City will conduct another test to ensure that the system works. That test is also expected to reveal how many sirens were damaged by Friday’s storm. The City will continue testing until all issues with the system have been discovered and resolved.

Documents

• Outdoor Warning Siren Activation SOP and Fact Sheet