SPRINGFIELD, IL — A Springfield alderman said not activating emergency sirens June 10 was “a dereliction of duty” and called for the ouster of the Springfield Fire Chief.
“You’re lucky nobody’s dead,” Ward 4 Ald. Larry Rockford told Chief Nick Zummo at a grilling at the June 16 Springfield City Council meeting. “You need to be gone, put in a new position. You let us down. It’s discouraging. It’s disheartening. And still you take no responsibility for what happened. You’re in charge of this stuff.”
Rockford was referencing an EF1 tornado with estimated winds of 110 mph that blew through the city, bringing down trees, snapping utility poles, damaging power lines, and leaving approximately 5,600 customers without power, primarily on Springfield’s north side, Rockford’s ward.
Heavily damaged was the Animal Protective League on Taintor Road. There was also damage at Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport and at the Illinois State Fairgrounds.
Rockford was particularly incensed because the city went through siren testing May 5 “for what? For what? It did us no good,” he said.
Zummo maintained the on-call emergency chief officer “evaluated the situation using the city’s established outdoor warning activation criteria and made decisions consistent with the information known at the time.”
Addressing the city council, Zummo said there were no confirmed reports of tornadic activity within Springfield were received and communicated from storm spotters and there were no sustained winds exceeding 70 mph threshold or golf ball-size hail.
“Information in real time differed significantly from information developed from post-storm damage assessments conducted after the event,” he maintained. “Emergency decisions must often be made within minutes using information that is incomplete, rapidly changing and sometimes conflicting.”
Rockford said afterwards he stood by his comments.
“I think it’s wrong to make excuses and beat around the bush,” Rockford said. “I was given five different reasons why the sirens didn’t go off. It’s his job.”
That comes on the heels of another significant weather event forecast for June 17.
Springfield is at a Level 3 Enhanced Severe Weather Risk, according to the National Weather Service in Lincoln. That includes the possibility of tornadoes near and south of Springfield, it said.
Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788; sspearie@sj-r.com; X, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Alderman calls for fire chief’s ouster after sirens weren’t activated
Reporting by Steven Spearie, Springfield State Journal-Register / State Journal-Register
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By Steven Spearie, Springfield State Journal-Register | USA TODAY Network
