ST. LOUIS – St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer has placed Sarah Russell, the Commissioner of the City Emergency Management Agency (CEMA), on leave following a failure of the city’s tornado sirens during last week’s deadly storm.

The decision to put Russell on paid administrative leave comes as an external investigation is launched into the actions of her office on the day of the tornado. The sirens, which are crucial for alerting residents to severe weather, did not sound as a tornado caused major damage in parts of St. Louis.

“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.

The investigation will look into why the CEMA staff, including Russell, were not in the office during the anticipated storms. Instead, they were attending a workshop at another downtown location, which left them unable to activate the sirens from the office.

Russell attempted to contact the fire department to activate the sirens, but a communication breakdown led to the sirens not sounding. Mayor Spencer’s office released audio of the call between Russell and a fire department dispatcher, highlighting the ambiguity in the directive to activate the sirens.

Mayor Spencer is expected to address the issue further at a press conference Wednesday morning at Firehouse 28, located near the area of significant tornado damage.

All facts in this report were gathered by journalists employed by affiliate KTVI. Artificial intelligence tools were used to reformat from a broadcast script into a news article for our website. This report was edited and fact-checked by KTVI staff before being published.