Aggie Bonfire - 1999 Collapse

1999 Collapse

At approximately 2:42 a.m. on November 18, 1999, the stack, consisting of about 5000 logs 40 feet (12 m) high, collapsed during construction. Of the 58 students and former students working on the stack, 12 were killed and 27 were injured. Immediately after the collapse, Emergency Medical Technicians and trained First Responders of the Texas A&M Emergency Care Team (TAMECT), the student run, volunteer first responder service of Texas A&M University, who staffed every stage of construction of Bonfire, sprang into action, triaging patients and administering first aid. TAMECT medics radioed an alert to University Police and Texas A&M University EMS (also a student run service), who dispatched all remaining university medics, and requested mutual aid from the surrounding EMS, Fire, and Police agencies. In addition the mutual aid received from the College Station and Bryan, Texas EMS, Fire, and Police Departments, members of Texas Task Force 1, the state's elite emergency response team, arrived to assist the rescue efforts.

Rescue operations took over 24 hours; the pace was hampered by the decision to remove many of the logs by hand for fear that using heavy equipment to remove them would cause further collapses, resulting in further injuries to those still trapped. Students, including the entire Texas A&M football team and many members of the university's Corps of Cadets, rushed to the site to assist rescue workers with the manual removal of the logs. The Texas A&M civil engineering department was also called on to examine the site and help the workers determine the order in which the logs could be safely removed, and, at the request of the Texas Forest Service, Steely Lumber Company in Huntsville, Texas sent log-moving equipment and operators. Bonfire survivor John Comstock was the last living person to be removed from the stack. He spent months in the hospital following amputation of his left leg and partial paralysis of his right side. Comstock returned to A&M in 2001 to finish his degree.