The primary, ominous sounds got here from deep inside the large stack of logs within the darkest hours of the Texas evening. Witnesses described listening to the stack of hundreds of logs moan and creak earlier than the crack of the middle pole because it snapped, then collapsed.
Greater than 1,000,000 kilos (450,000 kilograms) of timber tumbled. Right away, 12 folks have been killed, dozens extra have been injured and a college campus rooted in traditions carried throughout generations of scholars was completely scarred.
Texas A&M College is about to mark 25 years because the log stack collapsed within the early hours of Nov. 18, 1999. It was being inbuilt preparation for the annual bonfire forward of the Texas A&M-Texas rivalry soccer recreation in Faculty Station.
The college will maintain a Bonfire Remembrance ceremony on the web site of the tragedy on Monday at 2:42 a.m., concerning the time the stack collapsed.
“Yr after 12 months, Texas A&M college students have labored to make sure that we always remember these members of the Aggie Household who have been taken from us 25 years in the past,” faculty President Mark Welsh III mentioned.
The custom
The “Fightin’ Texas Aggie Bonfire” ranked among the many most revered traditions in school soccer and symbolized the college’s “burning need” to beat the College of Texas Longhorns in soccer. The primary bonfire in 1907 was a scrap heap that was set ablaze. By 1909, it was a campus occasion and the bonfire stack stored rising as railroad strains have been used to ship in in carloads of scrap lumber, railroad ties and different flammable supplies, in accordance with the college.
It reached a file top of 105 ft (32 meters) in 1969 earlier than directors, involved a few fireplace hazard, imposed a 55-foot (17-meter) restrict. Over time, the stack developed from a teepee-style mound into the vertical timber formation, a form just like a tiered marriage ceremony cake, that collapsed in 1999.
The annual bonfire attracted crowds of as much as 70,000 and burned yearly by way of 1998. The one exception was in 1963, after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The tragedy
The stack of greater than 5,000, 18-foot (5.5-meter) logs toppled per week earlier than it was scheduled to burn. The 12 who have been killed included 5 freshmen, 4 sophomores, a junior, a senior and a current graduate. A number of have been members of the Corps of Cadets, Texas A&M’s student-led, military-style group that performed a big function in its building.
Rescuers, together with members of the Texas A&M soccer crew, raced to take away the logs that had trapped and crushed among the victims. At rival Texas, Longhorns gamers organized a blood drive to help the survivors.
An investigation ordered by the college decided flawed building led by unqualified scholar employees led to the collapse.
Campus memorial
In 2003, the college devoted a memorial on the spot the place the stack fell. It features a “Spirit Ring” with 12 portals representing those that have been killed. Every portal incorporates an engraved portrait and signature of a sufferer and factors towards their hometown. By entering into the open archway, the customer symbolically fills the void left by the deceased.
Efforts to rekindle the bonfire custom
The annual Aggie bonfire was discontinued as an official faculty occasion after the lethal collapse.
The college thought of reviving the custom this 12 months to coincide with the renewal of the Texas-Texas A&M soccer rivalry on Nov. 30. The rivalry cut up in 2012 when Texas A&M left the Massive 12 Convention for the Southeastern Convention, however has resumed this 12 months as Texas joined the SEC.
A particular committee really useful resuming the bonfire, however provided that the log stack was designed and constructed by skilled engineers and contractors. Some members of the general public mentioned it mustn’t come again if it was not organized and constructed by college students, in accordance with custom.
Welsh finally determined the bonfire wouldn’t return to campus.
“Bonfire, each a beautiful and tragic a part of Aggie historical past, ought to stay in our treasured previous,” the president mentioned in June when he introduced his resolution.
College students have continued to prepare and construct unofficial off-campus bonfires over time and plan to burn this 12 months’s version on Nov. 29, the evening earlier than the Texas A&M-Texas soccer recreation.