Why St. Louis' Emergency Management Director Was Just Placed on Administrative Leave

I have no idea how to comprehend this act of incompetence. Last Friday, severe storms rolled into St. Louis. A tornado touched down and struck the northern part of the city—and there were no warning sirens. The tornado alarm system was never activated. It wasn’t due to a computer glitch. It was human error: the emergency management director, Sarah Russell, essentially forgot to turn it on, but it gets worse: the staff wasn’t even in the office. Russell contacted the fire department to initiate the system, but this was a shambolic failure (via Fox 2):

This is St. Louis CEMA Commissioner.

As a tornado with 152mph winds arrived, Sarah (they/them) and her staff was not available to activate the tornado siren.

5 kiIIed, 38 injured. pic.twitter.com/qTXYR5JDR6
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) May 22, 2025

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 internal 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.
“Let me be clear: CEMA exists to alert the community when severe weather is coming. This office failed to do that in the most horrific and deadly storm that our city has experienced in my lifetime,” Spencer said at a press conference.
The investigation looks 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 contacted the fire department to activate the sirens, but unclear communication led to nobody sounding the sirens. 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.

Great accountability questions from @shoshana_stahl last night. Notice how it takes three times before CEMA Commissioner Sarah Russell finally admits CEMA staffers were at a workshop when they should've been sounding an alarm. Russell also blames fire dept, old battered sirens. https://t.co/JvHSRqvX4A pic.twitter.com/9g7jCYBxJm
— Mark Maxwell (@MarkMaxwellTV) May 20, 2025

The level of incompetence is staggering. https://t.co/lWBwRIX8At
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) May 21, 2025

The consequences were that five people died. It also wasn’t a little tornado. It was an EF3.

Not at her desk. Her staff was AWOL. How does Ms. Russell still have a job?

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