Bonfire Collapse - Texas A&M University (College Station, Texas - November 1999) » The Collapse

On Thursday morning, November 18, 1999, approximately fifty-eight people were working to erect the fourth tier of the bonfire stack at the Polo Grounds, which is located on the north side of the campus near the intersection of University Drive and Bizzell Street. At 02:40 hours, the forty-foot stack of logs collapsed, falling generally in a southeasterly direction.

The collapse occurred with little or no warning. Several survivors reported that they heard a loud “pop” just seconds before the collapse, while others reported that they heard a low, thunderous popping noise. Regardless, everyone interviewed after the collapse stated that the bonfire stack fell too quickly for anyone to have escaped. Twelve people were killed and twenty-seven were injured. A male student suffered the most severe injuries and was hospitalized until April 14, 2000. He spent a total of eighty-three days in intensive care and his left leg was amputated above the knee.

As a safety precaution, no more than seventy workers are ever permitted to be on the stack at any one time. In addition, emergency medical personnel are required by University regulations to be on site whenever there are workers on the bonfire stack. When the collapse occurred, a paramedic, two EMTs, and three individuals with CPR and first-aid training were at the site. The paramedic immediately assumed command of victim triage and the emergency care providers began to render aid to the injured. At 02:43 hours, the first telephone call reporting the collapse was received by the 911 Communications Center in College Station. The caller reported that the bonfire stack had collapsed and that there may be as many as thirty people trapped in the debris. The College Station Fire Department was dispatched and an ALS Ambulance and Engine Company 721, with a total crew of five, responded on the initial alarm. While enroute to the scene, the Engine Company Lieutenant requested that another ambulance and the Battalion Chief be dispatched to the incident. The first units went on location four and one half minutes after being dispatched and relayed the extent of the collapse to the Dispatcher. Emergency responders were greeted with a scene eerily reminiscent of the children’s game of pick-up-sticks. Events then began to rapidly unfold.

The University has its own Police Department (UPD). The UPD immediately requested that all of their officers be dispatched to the scene and began to notify key personnel in accordance with the University’s Emergency Management Plan. Then, UPD secured the incident scene with the assistance of law enforcement officers from the cities of College Station and Bryan and deputies from the Brazos County Sheriff’s Department. Fortuitously, an inner perimeter was already in place. Yellow tape similar to that used by fire and police departments to mark the boundaries of an incident is always placed around the bonfire construction site in order to control access to the stack. The pre-established perimeter served to control access to the site throughout the duration of the incident.

Upon arrival, the College Station Battalion Chief assumed command of the incident and established a command post on the east side of the collapse site. The Battalion Chief’s vehicle was originally used as the command post, but as the incident grew in magnitude. One of the military units that subsequently responded to the incident erected a tent, which served as the command post for the duration of the event. As the incident progressed, the local telephone company ran a number of landlines to the command post and personnel from the University’s physical plant extended electrical service to the command tent.

The initial size up revealed that there were at least twenty-three people injured and possibly as many as ten fatalities pinned within the stack. Based upon this assessment, the Incident Commander ordered that two additional ambulances and another engine company be dispatched from College Station. He also requested three ambulances and the Truck Company from Bryan as well as the University’s two ambulances. Staffed entirely by students, the University’s EMS service is used exclusively to transport sick and injured students on the campus.

Command assigned the Lieutenant from Engine Company 721 to coordinate the EMS transportation sector. A triage sector for the walking wounded was also established and two salvage covers were placed on the ground to accommodate the more critically injured patients. The on-duty Deputy Chief from Bryan responded on his own initiative and was assigned by Command to manage the Rescue Sector, which was located on the south side of the stack.

Command then requested that the private ambulance service from St. Joseph’s Hospital, which normally only handles patient transfers, be dispatched to the scene. Command also requested that a general alarm be declared. A general alarm designation activates the recall of all of College Station’s off-duty firefighters.

At 02:50 hours, the automatic aid assistance from Bryan began to arrive. Bryan’s Deputy Chief requested that his Dispatcher send the Department’s seventeen member urban search and rescue team to assist with the rescue effort and he also initiated the callback of Bryan’s off-duty firefighters.

In the mean time, Command requested that the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) be activated to help coordinate all of the resources that would be required to manage the incident. He also appointed a Resource Officer to coordinate activities at the scene and a Staging Officer to manage the influx of emergency vehicles and rescue personnel. As with any event of this magnitude, a number of would be rescuers dispatched themselves without being officially requested. As is normally the case, this contributed to the confusion and congestion, which often accompanies large-scale events.

Upon being informed of the incident by the UPD dispatcher, several members of the Fire Protection Division’s Staff responded to the scene with the apparatus belonging to the State’s Urban Search and Rescue Team. Known as Texas Task Force One, the team is headquartered at the Firemen’s Training School (FTS), which is located on the western edge of the University campus. At the time of incident, the task force had not been granted FEMA USAR status. That status has been recently conveyed upon the team.

There are 186 members on the task force and they occupy nineteen different positions ranging from medical doctors to K-9 search and rescue units. Forty-eight Texas cities and agencies are represented on the team. Although the Task Force was not officially activated during the incident, a number of team members utilized the team’s listening devices and search cameras to help locate victims trapped within the bonfire stack. The Task Force members were assisted by structural engineers from the University’s Department of Civil Engineering to evaluate the structural stability of the collapsed stack of logs, which were precariously balanced on top of each other. Task force members from Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio also responded to the incident and were used as relief crews during the mammoth rescue effort.

The FTS routinely conducts a 400+ hour academy to train entry-level career firefighters and the students from the Recruit Class were summoned to the scene by members of the Fire Protection Training Staff to assist with the rescue effort.

Management of the incident assumed three separate and distinct phases. The initial phase consisted of the triage and immediate transport of patients who were not severely pinned beneath the collapsed stack. The triage process determined that a total of twenty-eight individuals required transportation to a hospital. Twenty-seven of those patients were transported within the first hour of the incident. The twenty-eighth victim was severely pinned and could not be transported until being extricated from the collapsed bonfire stack.

EMS Officials reported that eleven patients were taken to College Station Medical Center and seventeen patients were transported to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Bryan. An undetermined number of patients did not require transportation to a medical facility and were treated at the scene and released. None of the emergency responders were injured during the rescue and recovery effort, which was indeed fortunate when one, considers the number of personnel involved in the incident as well as the duration of the event and the physical effort required to bring the incident to resolution.

Phase Two of the incident consisted of those efforts directed at locating and rescuing victims who were pinned within the stack, but who were still alive. These efforts were labor-intensive and required the commitment of a significant amount of human and material resources to accomplish. Requests for manpower and equipment were relayed to the EOC who in turn contacted the sources identified in the joint Emergency Operations Plan. The exact number of people involved in the bonfire collapse incident is unknown, but it is estimated that approximately 3,200 people from at least fifty different agencies were involved in some capacity during the incident.

The primary obstacle confronting rescuers was the large number of logs scattered about the accident scene. There were at least 5,000 logs in the collapsed stack and as many as 2,000 more scattered around on the ground. It was quickly determined that the only way to safely handle the logs was to remove them by hand, one at a time. A number of areas had to be stabilized, however, prior to the removal of any of the logs. The Bryan Fire Department USAR Team had agreements in place with a local builder’s supply to furnish shoring materials for this purpose. These materials were brought to the scene by their vendor and were employed to enable the rescuers to safely access the victims pinned within the stack. When a victim was located, medical treatment was started even though the victim was still entrapped.

After the stack was stabilized, rescuers undertook the task of removing the logs from the stack. Once removed from the stack, student volunteers were utilized to haul the logs away from the scene. A large number of students, including members of the University’s football team and the Corps of Cadets, pitched in to help with this process. The discipline of the Corps helped to make this an orderly event and, no doubt, prevented injuries to those involved in removing the logs. Several cranes were already at the site and Command requested that several additional cranes and forklifts be sent to the scene. The heavy machinery was used whenever it was determined to be safe to operate without disturbing the stack.

Rescuers were successful in removing two live victims from the stack, the last one being removed at 06:51 hours. As previously stated, listening devices and search cameras were used in an attempt to located trapped victims. A number of K-9 teams were also on site, but did not play a major role in the search effort.

The bonfire collapse produced a major media event. A number of helicopters from news agencies buzzed the scene and approximately fifty television satellite trucks congregated on the north side of the incident site. A number of the television stations broadcast most of the event live from the scene. Due to the noise, Command requested that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) establish a “no fly zone”. The downdraft from the helicopters also helped to stir up dust at the rescue site and interfered in the rescue and recovery effort.

Easterwood Airport is located just west of the campus near the Firemen’s Training Field. The FAA Tower is not staffed around the clock and was closed at the time of the collapse. The FAA in Houston was contacted and they established a 2,000-foot floor. When the Easterwood Tower became operational later that morning, the FAA expanded the zone to three nautical miles and 3,000-feet. At 09:00 hours, Command called for complete silence for a period of forty-five minutes to maximize the chance that the listening devices might find someone.

The third and final phase of the incident involved the recovery of the bodies of the deceased. Initially, it was estimated that the recovery efforts would take more than twenty-four additional hours due to the number of logs still on the stack. The process would have to progress slowly to prevent further collapse of the stack and every log would have to be removed to ensure that everyone had been accounted for.

The identification of the victims proved to be problematic, because many of the victims were not carrying any form of identification. Fortunately, the bonfire construction process had a strict accountability system in place and the “pots” in charge of the stack had a reasonably accurate list of the persons who should have been working at the time the collapse occurred. Tragically, many of the deceased suffered severe trauma and were not immediately recognizable. The work rosters assisted in the process of identification.

A temporary morgue was set up near the command post and was placed under the supervision of the University Police Department. Initially, several pieces of apparatus were formed into a “V” to shield the deceased from public view. Three sixty-passenger buses later replaced the apparatus. The Justice of the Peace responded to the scene and declared the victims to be dead after their bodies were removed to the temporary morgue. Once the police identified a body, it was removed in a funeral home vehicle and was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital.

Although, the hospital does not have a formal morgue, there is storage capacity for up to four bodies. Needless to say, the number of fatalities far exceeded the hospital’s limited capacity. The situation was compounded by requests from skin and organ banks to harvest useable organs and tissue from the deceased. It took a lengthy period of time for these agencies to arrive at the hospital. Therefore, these requests delayed the release of the bodies to funeral homes. The grim task of removing the deceased began. The first body was removed from the top of the stack at 03:30 hours. Two more bodies were recovered on the east side of the stack at 04:00 hours and two bodies were recovered on the west side at 04:18 hours. Figure Five, below, provides an illustration of the approximate location where the dead and injured were found. The last body was not removed until 01:00 hours on Friday morning, the 19th of November. One of the students transported to the hospital later died, bringing the final death total to twelve. Eleven of the people killed were students and one was a graduate of the University. Five of the students were freshmen, five were sophomores, and one of the deceased was a senior. Two of the victims were females and ten were males.

Most counties in Texas do not have a medical examiner or corner. Instead, an elected Justice of the Peace (JP) performs that function. All of the deaths were determined by the local JP to be the direct result of the trauma suffered during the initial collapse. Therefore, autopsies were not ordered because the cause of death was known and there did not appear to have been any criminal or suspicious act surrounding the collapse.

As previously stated, the collapse became a media event. At one time during the incident, more than fifty television satellite trucks, including several from Spanish speaking stations congregated on the scene. The University was able to provide interpreters to accommodate the media personnel who did not speak English. Several television stations interrupted their regular programming to carry the event live from the scene.

A media sector was established in a parking lot on the north side of event. A PIO team conducted regular briefings throughout the incident, with the first full briefing held at 07:00 hours on the morning of the 18th of November and regularly scheduled briefings took place throughout the remainder of the incident. Two still photographers and four video cameras were allowed into the perimeter to take pictures. They were required to share their photos and videotape with the other media agencies.

The large number of personnel assembled on the scene necessitated a massive rehab effort. A number of tents were set up around the site by military personnel to feed and rehab the rescue workers. An attempt was made to rotate personnel every thirty minutes to lessen the chance for injury. The University’s food service, local restaurants and ordinary citizens all contributed to this effort. For example, at least four message therapists were on hand to help with tired and sore muscles. A large number of portable toilets were deployed at the scene as well. The College Station Parks and Recreation Department furnished tables, chairs, and ice chests. They also helped to establish shelters for the family members of the victims who responded to the scene to monitor the progress of the rescue effort.

The response by the community to the incident was overwhelming. Some one stated that you would ask for one item and you would get three. It was also reported that someone complained about being cold and approximately 500 sweatshirts appeared in short order. Whether the request was for food, chain saws, or some other item, it was always procured in abundance. Unfortunately, the donations at times overwhelmed the emergency responders. A number of would-be rescuer workers also showed up at the scene uninvited.

The Texas Forest Service also responded to the incident. The agency contacted the Texas Logging Council and requested that log-moving equipment be brought to the scene to assist with recovery efforts. Steely Lumber Company of Huntsville, located about one hour east of College Station, sent two logging machines and three equipment operators to the scene. Thanks to the skill of the operators and the capabilities of the equipment, the remainder of the stack was quickly dismantled, saving valuable time in the recovery effort.

The age of the deceased and the strong emotions and traditions surrounding the incident had a significant impact on the emergency responders. The duration of the incident, almost a full twenty-four hours, also increased the stress and frustration levels of those involved in the rescue and recovery efforts. Critical Incident Stress Debriefing teams were made available to emergency response personnel. Team members were supported in their efforts by area Chaplains and Ministers from the College Station Police.

Next » Department's Chaplains' Program