![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() |
You are in: World: Americas | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]()
|
![]() |
Friday, 19 November, 1999, 14:52 GMT
Memorial for bonfire dead
A memorial service has been held in Texas for students crushed to death when a bonfire which they were building collapsed. Eleven students from Texas A&M University died when the huge stack fell inwards. Dozens of students were climbing on the stack at the university, in College Station, Texas, when it suddenly collapsed at 0230CST (0830GMT) on Thursday. The last two bodies were recovered from the bonfire at 0215 on Friday - almost 24 hours after the structure collapsed.
At the memorial service, A&M University President Ray Bowen said: "This has been a day of unspeakable grief and sorrow." Former President George Bush, whose presidential library is located at Texas A&M, and Texas Lieutenant Governor Rick Perry, who graduated from the school in 1972, attended the service. The traditional lighting of the 40ft (12m) high bonfire was cancelled although some students said their dead colleagues would have wanted the ceremony to continue. The only other time that the bonfire lighting has been cancelled was after President Kennedy's assassination. Trapped for hours Some 28 students were injured, five of them critically. For hours, rescuers pulled people free from between the logs. One person was trapped for more than six hours.
The logs had been piled up for the traditional bonfire at the university, about 80 miles (130km) north-west of Houston. Lit the evening before the match, tradition has it that if the logs topple before midnight, then A&M will lose the game. But if the logs burn into the morning, A&M will be victorious. Thousands of logs are stacked high to build the bonfire, using cranes, tractors and crews of students. In 1994, a stack collapsed and a second was built and set on fire.
Links to more Americas stories
|
![]() |
![]() Links to other Americas stories are at the foot of the page.
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
^^ Back to top News Front Page | World | UK | UK Politics | Business | Sci/Tech | Health | Education | Entertainment | Talking Point | In Depth | AudioVideo ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To BBC Sport>> | To BBC Weather>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © MMIII | News Sources | Privacy |