By Ryan O'Connor
Staff Writer

Goffstown News/Ryan O’Connor The burned classroom at Weare Middle School was boarded up after fire gutted it on Friday, Feb. 24.

When sixth-graders at Weare Middle School return from February vacation on Monday, March 6, they will find themselves in a new classroom, minus any personal belongings left before the break.

That, after a fire completely gutted their classroom on Friday, Feb. 24 at approximately 9 p.m.

While saying that the school was lucky to have had the fire start on a weekend night at the beginning of school vacation, Principal David Pabst said there would still be some unfortunate ramifications to the students when they return to school.

“Between the teachers, guidance counselors and administration, we’ll explain to the kids what happened because they lost some personal belongings and projects (for an upcoming school fair) that they put a lot of time and effort into,” said Pabst.

As far as any short-term problems for the school itself, Pabst said plans have already been formulated to move the sixth-grade class to another room for the immediate future.

From there, he hopes to have the original classroom back in working order within a month.

“We’re hoping in a couple of weeks,” he said. “I’d say by March 20 we would hope that everything would be back to normal. We’ll switch things around a little and make sure they have someplace to go for now.”

The fire, according to Weare Fire Chief Robert Richards, does not look suspicious and most likely was electrical in nature, probably stemming from an outlet strip behind a computer.

He said it appeared that the strip was placed near a heater, although he is unsure that caused it to ignite.

Pabst said the school was lucky it had nighttime custodial staff present when the fire started, as one of the men, who did not want to be identified, smelled smoke and proceeded to discharge several fire extinguishers on the flames while he waited for the fire department to arrive.

“We believe his actions helped control that fire,” said Pabst. “He kept it contained in that room.”

Richards said several factors contributed to isolating the fire to only one room, including the help of the custodial staff, the fire alarm going off quickly, and fire doors being in place. He also said it helped that fire department Capt. Dave Hewey lives across the street from the school and noticed the smoke before the fire got out of control.

The part of the middle school that contains the classroom is an all-wood building and Richards said the department has a plan in place should the structure ever catch fire, which includes bringing in additional equipment in from other towns.

“That was one of my biggest fears – to have that building burn. So for us to contain it and stop it as fast as we did, those guys did a hell of a job down there,” said Richards. “Between the custodian and fire departments, it was an amazing feat to keep that fire contained in one room. I am very appreciative of that.”

In total, Richards said it took only about 45 minutes from the time of the call to the when the fire was deemed under control.