Ok, to make a long story short I will sum up what happened. I was coming back from a HS competition in Wac(k)o and I urged my teacher the driver to stop by college station so we could see A&M.
We pulled up and I wanted to show her the bonfire memorial. When I told her about it she was not a big fan of it at all. She said that she didn't think that we should have built such a memorial b/c quite frankly "They were drunk college kids wanting to build a bonfire, something was bound to have gone wrong."
It made me pretty mad and I explained to her how much of a family A&M was and everything like that...but, I really didn't know the facts of how it all happened. I know everyone went out there and had a good time, but I wasn't sure about the actual builders of the bonfire? I mean, did they drink too? If so, how much? I heard that the reason it fell was an engineering error or something of that nature. So was it the plans that were screwed up to begin with?

Sorry if what my teacher said offends anybody

still in high school?

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I know everyone went out there and had a good time, but I wasn't sure about the actual builders of the bonfire? I mean, did they drink too? If so, how much?

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One of the twelve people who died had a BAC of about 0.3%. Another one was at 0.16%.

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I heard that the reason it fell was an engineering error or something of that nature. So was it the plans that were screwed up to begin with?

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There weren't any plans; that was part of the problem.

I was in HS last year...really I always that they had some big drawn up blue-print like plans for it...It seems like you would when it was that big

...incoming...

http://www.tamu.edu/bonfire-commission/reports/

There's a spirit can ne'er be told
It's the Spirit of Aggieland.

We will never forget 11.18.1999
BTHO Bonfire

There were several contributing factors to the structural failure & collapse of the 99 bonfire.

A short version of some of the issues detailed in the report:

-lack of a detailed set of blueprint/plans of how it was built. Information was passed on by word of mouth, leading to small variations from year to year
-the land was improperly graded and had a slight (1 or 2 degrees) dip
-The stacked logs over a period of time had become increasingly more vertical and leaned into the central structure less. This creates an inherent instability as the logs were near vertical in 99. With no set blueprints, small variations on stack from existed from year to year, but went unnoticed.
-Logs on the upper tiers were 'wedged' into the structure which creates an expansive force on the lower tiers. In 99, the report found that the logs were 'aggressively' wedge and created too large an expansive load.
-The wire sets used to secure logs were insufficient to hold the expansive force and ultimately failed.

Other factors:
-problem solving was done in a 'reactive' manner, meaning that they would solve/fix issues only once they had arisen, instead of working vigilantly to fix problems before they happen (proactive problem solving)
-group think mentality: A large portion of the collapse was due to the lack of a group in charge of overseeing the design/construction from year to year to make sure that the structure was safe. Also included was a "this is how it's always been done' mentality, so change was difficult.
-alcohol: yes...there was alcohol at stack. Yes, a lot of people drank out there. This is completely unacceptable in the current off-campus bonfire.