A longtime St. Louis employee who rose in the ranks to head the City Emergency Management Agency is out of a job.
A City Hall source confirmed to St. Louis Public Radio on Wednesday that the director of public safety fired CEMA Commissioner Sarah Russell just days 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 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.”
This story will be updated
