Texas A&M Settles For $2.1 Million With Families Of 1999 Bonfire Collapse Victims

The 1999 Texas A&M football bonfire collapse that killed twelve students and injured 27 has come to some sort of resolution with the announcement that the university will pay seven of the victims’ families $2.1 million dollars in a settlement filed in state District Court in Brazos County, Texas. This marks the first time the university has paid anyone anything for the deadly tragedy that happened as a result of lack of student supervision. Plaintiffs in the case included the families of deceased students Jerry Don Self, Christopher Lee Heard, Bryan Allan McClain and Chad A. Powell and injured students Dominic Braus, Matthew Robbins and John Andrew Comstock while defendants included university employees previously thought to be protected by sovereign immunity, a doctrine that bars suits against government agencies and officials. In May, the 10th Court of Appeals in Waco said the defendants were being sued as individuals, paving the way for this settlement.

While the university has never publicly taken blame, an investigative commission underwritten by A&M, (pictured here is Major General Hugh Robinson from that commission), acknowledged that “cultural bias” took precedence over common sense that would have assigned a professional engineer to oversee the student-run project. The 1999 structure, which was 59 stories high when it fell instead of the advertised 40, was discovered with bottles and cans of beer strewn about the construction site that resided on university property. One of the deceased students tested for four times the legal alcohol limit. Additionally, structural mistakes had been found in a 1994 bonfire that tilted four days before it was to be lit. An engineering professor told the university that the design was unsafe and recommended they return to the original teepee design with a center pole, but he was ignored. The bonfire was rebuilt in its cake-tier design and fell again 40 minutes after being lit. That year, no one was hurt.
The university has barred students from building the bonfire on its property indefinitely, but unsanctioned bonfires continue to be built by students and volunteers on private property.
Other victims’ families were not part of this suit because they won a suit in 2004 worth about $6 million against the students who ran the bonfire construction, called “red pots” because of the color of their hard hats. The red pots’ parents paid those claims with their homeowner’s insurance.

“It is our hope that today’s announcement will help provide some closure to the tragic event for these individuals, as well as for the entire Aggie Family, and certainly including those who were injured,” A&M President Elsa Murano said.

A&M agrees to pay $2.1 million in bonfire case [Austin American-Statestman]
Bonfire Collapse - Texas A&M University (College Station, Texas - November 1999) » The Investigation [Firefighters Online]