In the wake of the May 16 tornado that ravaged St. Louis, a devouring swirl of controversy and consequence has battered the City Emergency Management Agency (CEMA). Following the superseding revelation that the tornado sirens failed to sound due to a non-operational activation button, the city's police are now probing into chilling online death threats targeting Sarah Russell, the embattled head of CEMA. Fox 2 News reports that Police Chief Robert Tracy confirmed these investigations at a Wednesday press conference.
Adding to the storm's aftermath, Mayor Cara Spencer has placed Russell on paid leave, per statements published by Fire Engineering, in a bid to assert accountability for siren system failure which may have exacerbated the storm's toll. While clarity evades whether the critical button was pressed, Spencer, who was flanked by local aldermen during the announcement, asserted that even a pressed button wouldn't have woken the sleeping sirens, afflicted as they were by unacknowledged dysfunction.
Fault lines trace back to CEMA, whom Mayor Spencer, in a press conference, entrusted with the assurance that those sirens would blare in the moment of trial. "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, according to Fox 2 News.
Led by Mayor Spencer's resolve, the accountability for these systemic lapses will not end with internal probing. An external investigation looms on the horizon, with Spencer vowing to peel back the layers of responsibility and dysfunction that contributed to the tragic silence of St. Louis' tornado sirens.
