Loretha Plair, a cook at Wing Elementary, takes a break in the Wing Elementary cafeteria Feb. 7 in Sikeston. Wing’s cafeteria is a tornado-safe room, but they do not have a space that is specifically safe for earthquakes (Hannah Schuh/Missourian).
NEW MADRID — At the New Madrid Historical Museum there’s an earthquake simulator where visitors get to play engineer. At their disposal are cylindrical wooden sticks and rectangular boards that can be constructed into simple buildings.
A numbered dial is then turned, which causes the platform to shake, simulating earthquakes of varying intensity. Most basic buildings are fine in the 1.0-3.0 range. However, when that dial turns to 4.0 and the faux-earth begins to violently tremble, the makeshift buildings tend to crumble.
Thousands of students go to school in nearby buildings that might do the same in a major earthquake.
The schools are in what is known as the New Madrid Seismic Zone. Under the Missouri Seismic Safety Commission’s school assessment program, it offers free, voluntary on-site evaluations of the earthquake readiness of school buildings and district facilities.
Earthquakes are New Madrid’s claim to fame. But that’s the last thing on residents’ minds
Three districts in southeast Missouri had reports commissioned. Even though they’re about a decade old, the reports have never been published and most of the buildings are still in use.
The reports detail the results of visual inspections and estimates of each area’s seismicity, or the frequency of earthquakes in the region. Being right on top of fault lines, each school district’s seismicity was found to be high or very high.
Experts aren’t certain about when the New Madrid faults will see another major earthquake. They’re infrequent and hard to predict. If it’s anything like the last time it happened in 1812, it would cause significant damage to the lives, economies and buildings of at least eight states.
Eric Sandvol, the former chair of the Missouri Seismic Safety Commission, said the building reports don’t use a specific magnitude because there are many factors that determine how much force will shake the ground, which is a key determinant of building collapse.
“Even if it’s a moderate, let’s say a mid-magnitude six earthquake, if you’re right next to that, you can have some pretty strong ground motions and have some pretty severe damage,” he said. The USGS estimates a 25%-40% chance of a magnitude 6.0 earthquake happening in the next 50 years.
Based on the area’s projected levels of ground shaking, the reports showed that most school buildings are not reinforced and are vulnerable to collapse if a major earthquake were to happen.
The ‘double-edged sword’
The most recent report commissioned for New Madrid-area schools was the Risco R-II school district in New Madrid County.
The 2017 report reviewed three district buildings – the elementary school, the gymnasium and high school – the newest of which was built in 1958. After an inspection, it gives each building a score.
A score of 2.0 means the building is expected to be safe following a strong earthquake, with just a 1% probability of collapse.
The reports scored Risco’s elementary and high school building structures at 0.5. That means there’s a 32% probability of potential collapse if the buildings experience the seismic shaking estimated in the report. The gymnasium scored a bit higher at 0.7.
The reports also examined nonstructural components and found that equipment like water heaters, propane tanks, stoves and tall classroom cabinets were unrestrained. Recommended safety wires weren’t found in lighting, and ceilings were “observed without … required seismic detailing.”
Risco R-II chool district Superintendent Amy Baker said in an email the district has implemented “almost all” of these nonstructural changes, but could not afford the structural upgrades. She did not respond to a follow-up email asking for specifics.
The report for Portageville School District found much of the same. It was released in 2013 and doesn’t have the same scoring system. But it did recommend further evaluation on 17 out of 19 of the buildings it examined – all but the athletic storage building and bus garage.
“The district should consider having a detailed structural engineering seismic safety evaluation performed for those buildings recommended for further evaluation,” the report said.
Portagville School District Superintendent Michael Allred did not respond to multiple requests for comment about whether or not any changes have been made since the report’s release.
“The reality is (rural school districts) don’t have the resources, typically, to address a lot of these things,” Sandvol said. It isn’t clear how much it would cost to retrofit these schools, but seismic retrofits of schools in other parts of the country typically cost millions of dollars.
Sandvol said reports are not publicized by the commission because it doesn’t want to deter districts from getting their buildings evaluated.
“That’s the double-edged sword,” he said. “Yes, you want the transparency, but at the same time you want to provide not too much negative incentive for school districts to have these engineers come in and evaluate the buildings.”
He’s also not sure that making the reports public would change people’s attitudes about proactive earthquake safety. In his experience, only one thing does.
“That’s the earthquake,” he said. “That’s what often changes things – when a disaster happens and it goes very, very badly. That’s when attitudes change, unfortunately.”
While the program is free-of-charge for school districts, not every bootheel school has taken the commission up on the offer, including the New Madrid School District. Director of School Safety & Security Anthony Roberts said earthquake safety isn’t a top priority.
“It’s just part of life down here,” he said. “We’ve got our earthquake plans, we do earthquake drills, but it’s not something that’s on the forefront of my mind here.”
While he said they do secure tall objects, the district’s structures aren’t built to withstand an earthquake.
“The cost that it would be to make those earthquake-resistant would be astronomical,” Roberts said. He added that the district hasn’t sought estimates for how much it would cost to fortify buildings.
Roberts said he wasn’t aware of the Seismic Safety Commission’s assessment program. He said he’ll consider it, but at the end of the day, he’s not sure what, if anything, it would really tell them.
“I feel our district does absolutely everything we can to provide safe and secure areas for our students,” he said. “Some of the recommendations that I’ve seen in the past – they’re just not economically feasible to do in our area.”
The district doesn’t shy away from asking the community for other sorts of upgrades. In 2020, voters overwhelmingly approved an $8.5 million bond, which helped fund improvements to its library, HVAC and a “FEMA building” that is meant to withstand disasters, including an 8.0 earthquake. However, it would have limited use in an actual earthquake.
“With a tornado, we have a warning that it’s coming, so we can move all of our students and staff over to that building,” Roberts said. “On an earthquake, there’s no way, without a warning, to move all of them over there.”
“Getting our kids educated, getting them where they can succeed, that seems to be on the forefront right now,” he said. “The earthquake is kind of an in-the-back-of-your-mind-type thing for now; we’re trying to take care of those upfront issues that we can right now.”
Slow and steady seismic safety
Sikeston School District also had a report commissioned. It, too, wasn’t flattering – most buildings were old and needed further evaluation.
However, Superintendent Shannon Holifield said they’ve made significant changes in the 10 years since.
“My first thought is that 2015 is a long time ago, and when I think about all the things we have done in the last five to seven years that have addressed this, that we need to communicate that we’ve made some big strides in becoming a much safer school district,” Holifield said.
Sikeston has since replaced multiple old buildings with new ones that are safer in the event of an earthquake. They’ve also secured shelves and appliances that weren’t anchored before.
Still, there are plenty of old, unreinforced buildings in use.
“We got issues, we got places we need to address, and we know that,” she said. “We know that Southeast Elementary is one of those. We’re having board meetings talking about it.”
The cost to seismically retrofit or update existing buildings is high, while the cost to ensure a new building is earthquake safe is usually nominal, according to the seismic commission.
“There’s going to have to be some type of funding source that can help us to make the older buildings that are still in really good shape and very usable, to be able to retrofit them to handle an earthquake of a size that would be a disaster,” Holifield said.
Holifield is in her third year as superintendent and said a priority of her tenure has been transparency with the Sikeston community.
“We opened up some of these old buildings and had community members come and walk through,” she said.
In return, the community has supported renovation efforts,
“We were passing bonds and asking for them to vote so that we could address issues that we felt were impacting the education and the experience of our students in this district, as well as our staff,” Holifield said. “That was the driving force for updating our facilities.”
The district put forth a $18.6 million bond measure in 2020 that would replace the Lee Hunter Elementary School and their high school’s “C” building. Both scored less than a 2.0 and were recommended for further evaluation in the 2015 report.
Voters approved it. The city of Sikeston crosses into both Scott County and New Madrid County, and while just over 50% of New Madrid voters rejected the measure, more than 60% of the much-larger Scott County electorate approved it, according to reporting from the Sikeston Standard Democrat.
“We are a very strong community, and we have a lot of partnerships with our community, and we just have a great relationship with our community,” Holifield said.
In April 2026, Sikeston will be once again going to voters with a bond for district-wide improvements. Holifield is confident they’ll have the district’s back.
“Bulldog Nation is not just the walls of our school,” she said.
Three years ago, Holifield inherited a district with a long way to go if it wants to be prepared for the eventuality of an earthquake. While other safety needs, such as gun violence in schools, feel more pressing, seismic safety has not been forgotten.
“I’m a big proponent for if we’re going to fix things and we’re going to be the best,” she said, “we have to talk about what that is and what’s wrong.”
This story originally appeared in the Columbia Missourian. It can be republished in print or online.