A longtime St. Louis employee who rose in the ranks to head the City Emergency Management Agency is out of a job.
The Department of Public Safety on Wednesday said CEMA Commissioner Sarah Russell had been fired on Tuesday. The decision came just a day after a disciplinary hearing.
Mayor Cara Spencer’s staff said she would not comment on personnel issues. Spencer had telegraphed the outcome at a Tuesday press briefing when she spoke of “putting in place a permanent, longtime, long-term director of the emergency management system that will help us really staff that office out.”
Russell was put on leave May 20 after the failure to activate outdoor warning sirens ahead of the May 16 tornado. They had written on Facebook on Aug. 14 that they believed the result of Monday’s hearing was essentially predetermined and they did not expect the process to be fair.
Russell did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment on the outcome.
An external report released Monday placed blame for the siren failure and a chaotic initial response to the tornado squarely on Russell. The report noted they were often not at the Emergency Operations Center, located at police headquarters, in the days after the tornado and was “frequently unreachable by phone.” Their absence, combined with the failure to update the emergency operations plan and the fact that Spencer had only recently taken over as mayor, made having a fully functional emergency operations center next to impossible, the report said.
The report also found that Russell failed to use a federal emergency response template or keep proper documentation. Complete implementation of those best practices, the report said, “did not occur until after Commissioner Russell was removed from day-to-day oversight and outside emergency management professionals were brought in to organize operations.”
Spencer said Tuesday she believed Russell had served the city with good intentions.
“This has been a hard, hard road for [them], for their colleagues, and for many members of the community who have worked with Commissioner Russell in the past,” she said. “I am not here to say anything other than what was in the report has merit and we're moving forward.”
Alderwoman Shameem Clark Hubbard’s 10th Ward was heavily impacted by the tornado. The blame for the early chaos, she said Wednesday, does not fall solely on one person.
Russell, she said, was a good person who always showed up.
“Not for one second do I think that anything was intentional,” Clark Hubbard said. “I hate outcomes like that but, there has to be responsibility that lies somewhere.”
Alderman Rasheen Aldridge of the 14th Ward agreed that Russell’s firing was unfortunate but something that probably needed to happen. But he also agreed that they were not solely to blame.
The report confirmed confusion over whether CEMA or the St. Louis Fire Department had primary responsibility to activate the sirens. A document from 2021 purported to put the fire department in charge, but Chief Dennis Jenkerson has said he believed his department would activate the sirens only at the direction of CEMA. The report found that individual employees within the fire department also had different understandings of the policy.
“I don't think it all just stops with CEMA,” Aldridge said. “I do think there's some questions of what the fire department knew, what they didn't know, and how they can be better moving forward.”
Aldridge said he is working with 4th Ward Alderman Bret Narayan, the chair of the Public Safety Committee, to hold a joint meeting with Aldridge’s Budget and Public Employees Committee to review the report for the public. The two committees may also draft a letter to the city’s fiscal oversight board to secure additional staff and funding for CEMA.
The agency had five full-time employees before Russell was fired. Last week, they posted on Facebook that in 2024, the city had denied requests for extra staff, contractors to help update emergency plans and the capability to make emergency purchases. At the time, Spencer, then the 8th Ward alderwoman, chaired the budget committee.
This story has been updated with confirmation of the termination and comments from elected officials.
