1999 Aggie Bonfire collapse facts for kids
Quick facts for kids 
Recovery operation the morning after the incident
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| Date | November 18, 1999 |
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| Time | 02:42 (CST) (UTC−5) |
| Location | College Station, Texas, US |
| Cause | Excessive internal stresses on logs and inadequate wiring strength on ties |
| Deaths | 12 |
| Non-fatal injuries | 27 |
At approximately 2:42 a.m. on November 18, 1999, the annual Aggie Bonfire at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, United States, collapsed during its construction, killing 12 people and injuring 27.
Collapse
The 59-foot (18 m) high stack, consisting of about 5,000 logs, 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), a student-run, volunteer service, who staffed each stage of construction, administered first aid to the victims. TAMECT alerted the University Police and University EMS, who dispatched all remaining university medics, and requested mutual aid from surrounding agencies. In addition to 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 slowed 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. 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.
Investigations
A commission created by Texas A&M University discovered that a number of factors led to the bonfire collapse, including "excessive internal stresses" on the logs and "inadequate containment strength" in the wiring used to tie the logs together. The wiring broke after logs from upper tiers were "wedged" into lower tiers.
The Texas Board of Professional Engineers announced in 2000 that the Aggie Bonfire met the requirements to be considered a complex construction project subject to regulation under state engineering laws and would thus have had to be designed and overseen by a professional engineer.
