Texas A&M Postpones Bonfire

COLLEGE STATION (AP) – The off-campus bonfire organized by Texas A&M University students planned for Saturday has been postponed after the Robertson County Commissioner’s Court decided Friday to maintain the burn ban, according to the student Web site for the bonfire.

The commissioners will re-evaluate the burn ban again on Monday.

Earlier this week, Robertson County commissioners voted to impose the burn ban because of dry conditions and a strong winds.

Robertson County Judge Jan Roe said officials didn’t think it would be safe to grant an exception for the bonfire.

“Even though the stack itself isn’t that high, with the flames and embers reaching hundreds of feet, and the wind being so inconsistent, there is no way to control what is going on,” she said in a story for Saturday’s Bryan-College Station Eagle.

She said that it rains this weekend it might be possible to allow the bonfire sometime next week. The National Weather Service forecast calls for a 30 percent chance Saturday and Sunday.

The bonfire has been banned from campus since 12 Aggies were killed when a 59-foot-high wedding cake-like stack of more than 5,000 logs collapsed as students were building it on Nov. 18, 1999. But since then students have continued the tradition off-campus. They’ve been constructing the bonfire this year at a ranch near Hearne.

From 1909 until the year before the accident, the bonfire was constructed and burned on the eve of A&M’s annual football game against its archrival, the University of Texas.

The current bonfire had been set to be burned the weekend before the rivals faceoff. It’s funded by admission fees and by support from A&M alumni.