COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Twenty-three years ago this month, the unimaginable happened. As current and former Texas A&M University students worked into the early-morning hours building what would have been the wooden frame for the annual Aggie bonfire, the structure collapsed. Twelve people died and 27 suffered injuries.
The structure was a 59-foot high stack of 5,000 logs that gave way in the early-morning hours of Nov. 18, 1999. The bonfire had been an annual tradition held prior to the annual UT-Texas A&M football games.
Rescue operations took more than 24 hours. The pace of the recoveries was slowed by the decision to remove many of the logs by hand. There was concern that using heavy equipment to remove the logs would cause additional collapses that would further injure anyone still trapped.
This past Friday morning, Nov. 18, before sunrise at College Station, thousands gathered on the grassy berm surrounding the Bonfire Memorial’s glowing Spirit Ring to honor the lives of the 12 Aggies who died during the collapse. Golden lights illuminated the memorial’s 12 portals, each featuring the likeness of the Aggie it honors and pointing toward their hometowns.