BY DARRELL HALEN

Contractors are winding up their summer-long work at Pelham High School. The changes they’ve made to the building are intended to improve safety for students and staff.

“They should be able to evacuate from the building faster than before,” said Dorothy Mohr, the school’s principal.   

The work was done to address some of the problems cited by local and state fire protection officials a year ago.

Last March, voters approved a school district budget that included $395,000 to make the improvements in the building.

Students returning to school will notice three areas of the building that have been changed.

In the math area, a narrow dead-end hallway has been eliminated. Now, there is a 12-foot-wide hallway that extends from the school’s main corridor to an exit at the back of the building.

The area previously had five classrooms. Now there are three large classrooms and each one is accessible from the new hallway. Previously, all classroom doors swung into the narrow hallway, interfering with the ability to leave the area.

Combustible paneling that was around a storage closet has been removed.

Two of the new classrooms are a little more than 1,000 square feet each. One room is a little less than 1,000 square feet. The new hallway has two new fire extinguishers and each classroom has a fire detector.

In the English area, a new 28-foot corridor was created to link one of the school’s main hallways to an existing exit.

The exit was once inside a classroom, which has been reduced to 522 square feet.

“We had to make that (exit) accessible from the hallway,” Mohr said.

Because it is small, the room’s only storage space will be one bookcase.

“We’ll have to use this room,” Mohr said. “It will be a little crowded.”

Featured in the new corridor is a new fire extinguisher, a new safety light and a fire detector.

In a front quadrant of the building, where there were classes for world languages, science, art and health, the number of classrooms have been reduced from eight to seven.

Previously, classroom 5B could only be accessed by walking through another room, 5A. Classroom 5A is gone.

Now there is a large open area with a new building exit that Mohr refers to as a gallery.

Combustible plywood walls have been covered with flame retardant material, and a vent has been eliminated.

Smoke could have traveled through the vent and air coming through it could have accelerated a fire, Mohr said.

Double doors leading to the area will automatically shut when the school’s fire alarm sounds, keeping smoke from moving to other parts of the school.

To improve safety, school officials closed six classrooms in the building and rented six portable classrooms last winter. Those portables will continue to be used.

“In the grand scheme of things, we’re up three classrooms,” Mohr said.

Fire Chief Michael Walker said he’s pleased with the changes undertaken by school officials.

“I think they’ve cooperated with us. For us, it’s a milestone,” Walker said. “It’s dramatically safer than it had been.”    

One of the issues raised by the fire department was the lack of protection to gas piping in the science department.

Many of the gas pipes are located in a storage room and could easily be damaged or broken causing a gas leak at the school, it was noted.

Walker said school officials had the area cleaned up, and said it’s important that the number of people going into the storage room is minimized to ensure nothing tips over and breaks a pipe.