Emerson Elementary School

2011 Joplin Tornado Destroys Schools

May 22, 2011 goes down in history as one of the most terrifying days in the US when something dubbed a ‘Supernado’ dawned on Joplin Missouri. It was one of the deadliest storms ever experienced injuring over one thousand people and causing millions of dollars in damage.

The School Board began responding immediately. Their first priority was to account for all of our staff and students, then assess the damage. All students and staff were accounted for within one week of the tornado. Joplin Schools took a hard hit with six schools, Emerson being one, considered total losses and an additional 4 that were damaged/partial losses. Next was finding temporary schools for students to be able to learn at until the long recovery process was complete.

A month after the tornado, the community thought they were finally getting some good news when an engineer and insurance carrier deemed Emerson NOT a total loss like was initially thought. Superintendent C.J. Huff said him and his administration would consider options about using the school again. Meanwhile, when the semester started in August, Emerson students were put up at a temporary schooling location at Duquesne School.

But the day the doors opened again never came, the board had voted to consolidate Irving and Emerson students into one $18.5 million campus that opened in 2014. The building became surplus and was abandoned.

“It was hard to leave it,” said Raye Frerer, a special services teacher at Emerson for three years before the tornado. “There were a lot of tears shed there. It’s hard to put away the memories.” Because of Emerson’s position as a neighborhood school, many teachers and staff members worked hard to take care of the families who lived nearby, Frerer said. Some teachers even invited their students and families into their homes during off-hours, she said.

Demolition of Emerson Elementary School

The final chapter of this story began being written in the summer of 2016 when the Joplin School Board hired contractors to tear down the historic school for $128,000. After initial assessments and salvaging of the building, demolition crews made their way onto the property in October manning heavy machinery to bring the historic school down. As they began knocking down bricks, asbestos was discovered in the building, halting the operation due to potential public health risks. Asbestos remediation took place and the crews were back at it again throughout the month of December.

The nameplate that sat above the entrance and a few pallets of bricks are all that’s left in addition to memories and pictures of the Emerson School. Stored away by the Joplin BoE. On top of the empty site a housing development was constructed, leaving no trace of the once Emerson Elementary School.