| Texas Tragedy: Readers React | |
| In November 1999, twelve students were killed and more than two dozen injured when a 4-story high pyramid of logs assembled for a pep rally bonfire collapsed at Texas A&M. Was the collapse due to faulty design? Here is what readers said shortly after the accident. |
From our Discussion Forum...
- "Bonfire is engineered and designed to be a stable structure. The Center Pole based design has been in use since 1946, and the spliced center pole has been in use since 1947. These designs have a 50+ year history of safety. They are not simply piles of logs."
- "I've worked that bonfire - and let me tell you - we all knew it was dangerous! Dangerous as hell!"
- "...Bonfire has not gotten bigger over the years. It has stayed the same height since 1970 when it was restricted to its current height. The structure has only fallen twice before."
- "Bonfire is not just a big burning of a bunch of logs. It is a gathering of friends from the present and past and a celebration of life, friendship, and traditions."
- "Bonfire is a tradition, fine, but why does the bonfire have to be 55-60 feet tall and 45 feet wide?"
- "The bonfire was not essential for any purpose whatsoever. It was a pep rally stunt."
- "...It isn't a bonfire, it's Bonfire."
- "What is the purpose of building a structure that large every year, using what once were 7,000-8,000 tall, beautiful trees, only to burn them in some ritual that supposedly promotes team spirit ? And... is there no concern whatsoever as to what the use of hundreds of gallons of jet fuel poured on the structure to induce burning does to the atmosphere?"
- "[A&M] is a school that trains people to build things... What do you think the ratio of the students there will go into building houses and many other things and will be injured or killed on the job?"
- "We live in the Oops Generation in which every tragedy is brushed aside with a crying session in front of school by kids holding hands, parents frantically arranging funerals, school administrators making public statements that the matter will be investigated, and the public going to the next page to read celebrity gossip, and more tragedy and thinking nothing more of it. The only result is an OOPS! attitude."
- "With the notions of reason, creativity and productivity in mind, What Can Constructively Be Achieved With 125,000 Hours of Human Effort and 7,500 Trees?"
- "How many homes could be built with that same amount of manpower, energy, knowledge and lumber. If the same resources were used to build a couple of homes for the elderly or poor families with young children, or maybe a structure where teenagers could go for supervised recreation, it wouldn't seem like such a waste."
- "I say keep the bonfire. Otherwise these AGS would have died for nothing."
- "An annual Habitat for Humanity building party would instill strong, compassionate values in their spirited, impressionable minds. What does burning 7,000 trees teach?"
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