On Friday, a deadly and destructive tornado ripped through the heart of St. Louis, Missouri, but none of that city's residents were warned of the fast-approaching danger because the city's tornado siren system was never activated.

On Tuesday, the St. Louis mayor suspended the city's top emergency management official amid an ongoing independent investigation of that egregious failure, the Daily Mail reported.

The suspension follows an initial internal probe of the incident by the mayor that revealed not only that the tornado sirens were never sounded but also that the critical system itself and the protocols to activate it were not working and outdated.

No sirens heard ahead of Friday's deadly tornado

According to CBS News, there were no tornado sirens heard in St. Louis on Friday afternoon when a massively damaging tornado tore through the city between 2:30 and 3:00, leaving five people dead while negatively impacting thousands of other residents.

The city reportedly has 60 tornado sirens scattered throughout the metro area. Upon the issuance of an applicable tornado warning by the National Weather Service, either the City Emergency Management Agency or the Fire Department is supposed to instantly trigger those sirens with the press of a button.

That system was never activated on Friday, ostensibly because of a communications mishap, but that may be a moot point because it was subsequently discovered that the Fire Department's tornado siren button didn't work, as well as that the system activation protocols were outdated and confusing.

CEMA Commissioner suspended and replaced

In a Tuesday news release, St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer announced that she had placed CEMA Commissioner Sarah Russell on paid administrative leave while awaiting the findings of an independent external investigation of Friday's failures.

It seems unlikely that Russell will ever return to that job, as Spencer further noted that she'd named Fire Department Captain John Walk to be the interim leader of CEMA "until a permanent commissioner has been found."

"CEMA exists, in large part, to alert the public to dangers caused by severe weather, and the office failed to do that in the most horrific and deadly storm our City has seen in my lifetime," Spencer said in a statement. "Commissioner Russell has served our City for years and is a person of goodwill, but I cannot move on from this without providing accountability and ensuring that our emergency management is in trusted hands."

"The failure to activate the siren during a tornado has rightfully angered St. Louisans, including myself," the mayor added. "While my first priority on this issue was to make sure this can never happen again, our community deserves full transparency and accountability."

Tornado siren protocols updated by mayor

That "full transparency and accountability" for the St. Louis mayor apparently involves publicly revealing what she learned from an initial internal investigation she ordered, which includes the release of documents and an audio recording of Russell's "ambiguous" phone call to the Fire Department about the tornado warning on Friday and whether the sirens should be activated.

Per outdated protocols that Russell was supposed to update but never did, CEMA had the primary authority to activate the sirens, followed by the Fire Department. Yet, all of the CEMA officials were at a workshop event and not in their office where the button was located on Friday afternoon.

Further, Russell's phone call to the Fire Department about the tornado warning was unclear about whether they should trigger the sirens, though, as it turns out, a clear directive wouldn't have mattered, as it was later discovered during a subsequent test that the Fire Department's activation button didn't work.

Now, per an executive order from Spencer, the Fire Department has the sole responsibility of activating the tornado sirens, and a member of the department will be stationed near the activation button at all times in the future, initially at the CEMA office until the button at the Fire Department is fixed, along with several non-working sirens that were either previously broken or damaged in Friday's storm.