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Tuesday, August 29, 2000

Modified A&M bonfire unveiled
Student group consults professional engineering firm for safer log stack
By Juan A. Lozano
Associated Press
HOUSTON - Texas A&M students vying to hold an alternative bonfire off campus this fall, despite a two-year moratorium on the tradition after last year's deadly collapse, are promoting a modified log stack they claim is safer.
   The proposed stack would have a solid, 60-foot centerpole surrounded by logs leaned against it in three tiers and then wired together, the Texas A&M student newspaper The Battalion reported Monday.
   Formerly, logs were stacked in wedding-cake fashion.
   A pulley system would hoist logs onto the stack so no students would have to stand on it. A bucket truck would lift individuals so they could tie down the newly placed logs.
   The centerpole would be buried 20 feet, making a 40-foot bonfire that would be 15 feet shy of the traditional height limit.
   Will Clark, one of the board members of Keep the Fire Burning, the group organizing the off-campus bonfire, said Monday he did not want to discuss the specifics of the proposal because a final decision on whether to proceed with the plan has not yet been made. The group expects to make that decision within a week.
   Clark's group has been presenting the proposal to various student organizations with mixed reviews, Clark said.
   The 90-year-old tradition is on hold after last year's collapse that killed 12 Aggies and injured 27 others, many of whom were on the 2 million pound log stack when it fell during construction on Nov. 18.
   The bonfire annually draws thousands of Aggies to the College Station campus on the eve of A&M's football game against its archrival, the University of Texas.
   In May, a five-member commission appointed and funded by Texas A&M to investigate the deaths blamed flawed construction techniques and a lack of adequate supervision of students assembling the stack.
   A&M President Ray Bowen announced in June that the tradition was suspended and would continue only with greater university supervision and a professionally engineered design.
   Keep the Fire Burning says their model for an alternative bonfire is the result of consultation with professional engineers, one of them a former student who has worked on the bonfire before.
   However, student body president Forrest Lane was not satisfied.
   "I would not feel very safe with a bonfire happening this November," Lane said. The university is still against any alternative bonfire, spokesman Lane Stephenson said.

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