Looking back at the explosion and fire that destroyed Salem Junior High School in Burke County, NC, in March 1987.
Tuesday night, March 17, 1987. Address was 1311 Salem Road, south of Morganton. Three-story brick building with 25,000+ square-feet. It was located on a campus that also included two elementary school facilities, a gymnasium, and a storage trailer.
Built in 1931, it originally housed Salem High School until 1973. Was repurposed as a junior high. It had 16 classrooms, a library, and several offices. It housed 440 students.
On the night of the explosion, the building was empty. Next door, however, more than 300 faculty, students, and spectators were watching a basketball game in the gymnasium building. It was only 50 feet away.
The explosion occurred around 7:30 p.m. It was described as a “dull thud” by those in the gym. Said one attendee, “it shook the walls in the gym and shook loose some broken window panes.” The explosion was heard several miles away.
The blast blew out the front windows of the Salem Elementary School, which was located 75 feet away. It also destroyed five automobiles parked next to the junior high school. The damage included a six-inch “piece of metal window frame” that punctured the trunk of a Pontiac Fiero. Falling concrete blocks crushed the fronts of vehicles.
Those fleeing the gym found the junior high school building fully engulfed in flames. The raging fire quickly destroyed the building’s roof.
The first fire dispatch was at 7:32 p.m. Nearby Salem VFD was first-due. Ten fire departments–both city and county–responded with 15 units and over 75 firefighters.
Suppression efforts included “five teams of firefighters [who] aimed high pressure hoses” on the building and also protected a 500-gallon LP tank on the side of the building. Morganton’s 85-foot aerial tower also flowed two streams.
Hydrants were supplemented with shuttled water and using drop tanks positioned at each end of the fire building. Four tankers from county departments brought water from the Morganton Dye and Finishing Company on Salem Road, drawn from the plant’s well.
Hazards included downed power lines that were “blown loose from the building” and hindered firefighting efforts until power company personnel arrived and turned off the power.
Burke County Rescue Squad members patrolled the perimeter and prevented “reporters, photographers and onlookers” from getting too close to the fire building. Several hundred spectators gathered “in a 500-yard radius” from the fire building.
The fire was brought under control about 10:00 p.m. Five fire trucks and more than a dozen firefighters remained on scene through the end. Burke County Sheriff’s Department deputies were also “stationed around the site.”
Burke County React members assisted with detouring traffic around the site.
Cause Determined
Investigators from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were called to assist with determining the cause of the explosion. They determined that the blast was caused by propane gas that had been released from a pair of 100-pound cylinders that were located outside the school building.
That afternoon, a still-unnamed male student had climbed onto the roof of the shed where the two cylinders were stored. He was waiting on his parents to pick him up. “He fiddled with the valve on one of the tanks out of boredom and inadvertently left it open,” recounted a retrospective in 2019.
The tank was connected to a gas line that officials thought had been plugged. But the gas line was still open and fed into a former science lab on the second floor. That room was now used as a teacher’s lounge. Gas filled the space and later ignited “when a solenoid [sparked] in a soft drink vending machine” in the lounge.
Since the explosion was an accident, there were no charges filed against the student. But if he had been charged with a criminal act—e.g., if officials believed he acted with criminal intent—the student could have faced up to 30 years in prison.
Several people later remembered smelling gas on the Monday before the explosion, but no one reported the smell until after the explosion and fire.
Damage was estimated as $1.5M for the building and $500,000 for the contents. The elementary school suffered $75,000 of estimated damage.
Officials fast-tracked the construction of Liberty Middle School, which took two years. The nearby North Carolina School for the Deaf opened to students about two weeks later, where portions of Hoey Hall and Hoffmeyer Hall were used as classrooms. The Salem campus was still used for athletic activities.
And since most of the records of the students’ grades were destroyed, many of the classes that semester were put on a pass/fail system.
Sources
News Herald articles from March 18, 1987, to March 23, 1987.
News Herald, March 18, 1987
Fire destroys Salem School
Schools look for space
Investigators search rubble
School built in 1931
School ‘blew like sticks of dynamite’
Students, teachers mourn for lost school
News Herald, March 19, 1987
Gas explosion may be cause of Salem fire
School system eyes options
News Herald, March 20, 1987
Probe goes on at site
Salem Junior High students to be relocated at deaf school
Vital student records lost
Books desperately needed
News Herald, March 23, 1987
Open gas valves caused explosion
Students return to class
News Herald, August 16, 1987
Back to normal
News Herald, September 24, 2019
30th anniversary of Salem Junior High School explosion remembered
