Tornado sirens did not sound in St. Louis during the extreme weather last week because of a “human failure,” Mayor Cara Spencer said Monday.
Since a devastating EF3 tornado ripped through the area on Friday that killed five people, an outpouring of residents have said they did not hear a warning that could have saved lives.
“A button wasn't pushed, and the sirens were not deployed,” the mayor said.
In the minutes between when the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning around 2:30 p.m. and when the storm cut through St. Louis’ central corridor and up through north city neighborhoods, Spencer said someone made a mistake and did not trigger the siren system.
“There was a failure, a human failure, a failure in protocol to get the sirens up and running to let the community know that there was a massive weather event hitting our community,” she said.
Spencer said emergency protocols put in place in 2021 were “not exceptionally clear” about who was supposed to complete which task.
According to the city’s website, workers at the St. Louis Fire Department Dispatch Center or City Emergency Management Agency activate the siren alerts.
“My role to ensure that moving forward, this protocol is crystal clear, and it is,” Spencer said. “This protocol is calling for our fire department — who is staffed 24 hours a day — to issue those warnings. And from this point forward, the fire department, with whom I have the utmost confidence, is going to be doing that work moving forward.”
The mayor’s acknowledgement on Monday confirms what St. Louisans had suspected and feared: Despite the city successfully testing updated sirens one day earlier, residents were not given a warning for the first deadly tornado in the city since 1959.
The tornado, which reached wind speeds up to 152 mph and stretched a mile wide at some points, injured 38 people in the metro area, damaged more than 4,440 buildings and caused at least $1 billion in property damage.
Spencer did not make it clear if some or all of the sirens did not go off in anticipation of the tornado.
Officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency are expected to assess the area’s damage later this week.
Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe requested an emergency declaration from the federal government.
After FEMA officials survey St. Louis, St. Louis County and six counties in southeast Missouri, Kehoe and other elected officials are hopeful the region will be eligible for a major disaster declaration, which will unlock even more federal dollars.
“FEMA has a lot of resources, and we want to see all of them deployed here,” U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley said at a Monday press conference.
City officials are waiting to call the Missouri National Guard until they know more about the needs of damaged neighborhoods, the mayor said. The city is also working to set up more dumpsters and large-scale dump sites to collect debris.
Spencer acknowledged that people affected by the tornado would be hurt by the news that the city had failed to use the warning sirens.
“I understand that our families are very hurt. They should be,” Spencer said. “We've lost lives; we've lost houses; we've had so many people injured. I absolutely, I absolutely hear you, and I can tell you that moving forward, we are accountable.”
This article has been updated.
