The long-awaited report focused on the four-tier wedding cake design
for the bonfire, which engineers had criticized as being inherently
unsafe to support a tower of logs 55 feet
high.
The five-member panel, disclosing
the findings of its probe into the collapse that killed 12 people
and injured nearly 30 last November, blamed school officials and
students involved in the construction of the bonfire for the
disaster.
“This failure has roots in
decisions and actions by both students and university officials over
many many years,” said Leo Linbeck, a Houston construction executive
who headed the panel.
“It created an
environment where a complex and dangerous structure was allowed to
be built without controls,” he said.
Structural
Failure
The commission determined the structural
failure was caused by excessive stresses on the lowest of the four
tiers. Those stresses were heightened by excessive wedging of logs
from the second stack into gaps in the lowest
stack.
The lowest stack, however, had
inadequate wiring to hold it together. Steel cables used in recent
years were not used in 1999, the commission
found.
The panel also found the logs
were standing too vertical, the stack was overbuilt and the ground
had a slight slope.
When it began, in
1909, the Texas A&M bonfire tradition involved only a few
students lighting a relatively small fire before the big game with
rival University of Texas.
But since
then, that small pile of logs has been replaced by a massive
structure that can weigh up to 2 million pounds.
“More than two fully loaded jumbo
jets,” Bonfire commission member Hugh Robinson told ABCNEWS, “yet
design and construction have remained almost the exclusive purview
of students,” he said. “And that was a large part of the reason for
last fall’s tragedy. ”
Bonfire
Fate Unknown
Students told ABCNEWS they believe the
tradition of building bonfires should go
on.
“I would like to see it continue,”
said one student who didn’t give a name. “Mostly because it’s a
tradition. It’s been around a long time. My dad did it. I did it.
I’d like to see it continue,” he said.
“Really, I don’t think they’re saying there’s anybody associated
with Texas A&M who would not like to see the bonfire burning
again,” another student said.
“You know
it’s something that definitely needs some changes, but also needs to
continue. You know people die everyday in a car accident. Yet you
still get in your car and drive.”
School
President Ray Bowen said he would not decide the bonfire’s fate for
another six weeks. He said that emotionally he wanted to keep the
tradition, but that the decision must be based on reason.
Students have been gathering to build
the bonfire on the College Station campus each year since 1909. The
Thanksgiving event draws thousands on the eve of A&M’s football
game against its archrival, the University of
Texas.
The large structure is built over
several weeks with multiple stacks of full-size logs put in place by
cranes, tractors and student workers.
The structure is designed to twist inward and collapse on itself as
it burns.
ABCNEWS correspondent Mike Von Fremd,
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this
report. |
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