The sirens were seven years past the typical lifespan for such a system, said then-Commissioner Sarah Russell. Finding parts for repairs was becoming more expensive and difficult.
“This is going to be a big concern to deal with,” Russell said.
Today, that same system is indeed a big concern after staffers failed to activate it as a powerful tornado was bearing down on the city. Residents who lost loved ones in the storm were furious. Mayor Cara Spencer said there were multiple failures, from a broken siren activation button at the fire department, to a lack of clarity in protocol, to a miscommunication between Russell and a fire department employee.
Days after the tornado, Spencer put Russell on leave amid allegations of mismanagement.
But problems with the sirens have been known for a while. And the city has been trying to fix them.
Russell and other officials have been talking about their deteriorating state in public hearings since at least 2021. Funding for a new system, which could automatically activate sirens with an alert from the National Weather Service , was approved in 2023.
Two years later, the project is still working its way through city bureaucracy. A key study paving the way for new sirens to be installed is supposed to wrap up this spring.
Officials acknowledged the efforts in interviews and pledged to see them through.
“We’re going to fix it,” said Spencer, who took office in April.
‘Looking into the future’
The city installed its current siren system a quarter-century ago, in the wake of another storm that hit St. Louis County.
The system it replaced had been in bad shape. It dated back to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration and was designed to alert the populace to air raids. Just 35 of the 127 devices worked.
In June 1999, with the first new noisemaker in the ground, officials celebrated. They touted the sirens’ wider ranges and said the attached loudspeakers would help them communicate more information to the populace more quickly.
“We may not be able to control Mother Nature,” said then-Mayor Clarence Harmon, “but we can warn people.”
By May 2021, the sirens were flashing warning signs of their own.
Russell told an aldermanic budget committee about the sirens being well past their useful life and the difficulty of procuring parts and making repairs.
Russell also raised the question of whether the city really wanted a new system: New sirens would cost at least a few million dollars. And sirens, Russell said, are limited in that they were only designed to reach people who are outdoors when a storm hits.
Moreover, the agency had recently put in place a new — and less expensive — system capable of pushing storm alerts to residents’ smartphones.
Aldermen were intrigued. Spencer, then the 20th Ward alderwoman, asked how many other cities still had sirens. Then-Alderwoman Marlene Davis , of the old 19th Ward , applauded Russell’s presentation.
“You are definitely looking into the future,” she said. “Modern technology says that people can be alerted probably in a minimum of 12 to 15 different ways — without a siren that may not work.”
A study, bids, contractors
There was debate within Mayor Tishaura O. Jones’ administration about moving away from sirens in favor of the more modern approach, relying on phones and the cell network to get alerts out, Jones operations director Nancy Cross said in a hearing.But ultimately, officials decided they still needed the sirens. There were too many people in the city who didn’t want or have access to smartphones.
By May 2022, Russell had formally requested money for a new system. Russell also reported continued trouble with the existing version.
“We’re experiencing many of the same concerns and issues,” Russell said. “At this age, they’re very unpredictable.”
In April 2023 , Russell took the sales pitch to a special panel overseeing the city’s economic development tax.
On a good day, Russell said, fewer than half of the sirens were fully functional. Many had broken speakers.
“That is, of course, a very big concern when we’re talking about making these critical alerts to our residents,” Russell said.
It worked. The money was added to the 2024 budget.
In March 2024, the city’s Board of Public Service put out a notice seeking contractors to study the best locations for new sirens to ensure maximum coverage of the city. Sirens with space around them a quarter-century ago may now be blockaded by new buildings, so their replacements may need to go somewhere else.
Two months later, Russell told aldermen the hope was that the new system would be in place by the end of 2025.
The Board of Public Service approved a contract for the study in November.
And last month, Russell told aldermen the results would be in soon.
The city has not yet sought bids for the project of installing the new sirens, however.
Rasmus Jorgensen, a spokesman for Spencer, said work designing a new system is ongoing. The contract to install the new system is set to go out for bid in the fall.
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