The first, ominous sounds came from deep within the massive stack of logs in the darkest hours of the Texas night. Witnesses described hearing the stack of thousands of logs moan and creak before the crack of the center pole as it snapped, then collapsed. More than a million pounds (450,000 kilograms) of timber tumbled.
In an instant, 12 people were killed, dozens more were injured and a university campus rooted in traditions carried across generations of students was permanently scarred. Texas A&M University is set to mark 25 years since the log stack collapsed in the early hours of Nov. 18, 1999.
It was being built in preparation for the annual bonfire ahead of the Texas A&M-Texas rivalry football game in College Station. The school will hold a Bonfire Remembrance ceremony at the site of the tragedy on Monday at 2:42 a.m.
, about the time the stack collapsed. “Year after year, Texas A&M students have worked to ensure that we never forget those members of the Aggie Family who were taken from us 25 years ago," school President Mark Welsh III said. The “Fightin' Texas Aggie Bonfire” ranked among the most revered traditions in college football and symbolized the school's “burning desire” to beat the University of Texas Longhorns in football.
The first bonfire in 1907 was a scrap heap that was set ablaze. By 1909, it was a campus event and the bonfire stack kept growing as railroad lines were used to ship in in carloads of scrap lumber, railroad ties and other flammable.
