RHIT Homecoming 2008 - The Bonfire

The Bonfire

Every year for homecoming, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology freshmen spend a week building the country's largest man-made (no construction equipment) bonfire. The sophomores, by tradition, perform nightly raids on the bonfire to attempt to tear it down, so the freshmen must guard it twenty-four hours a day for the week leading up to homecoming.

The day of the bonfire, a group of freshmen must go on a road trip with the purpose of "acquiring" an outhouse to top the bonfire with.

The bonfire, still under construction the afternoon before, and not yet topped with the outhouse.

Before the bonfire was lit, we had a fireworks show. The finale of the fireworks and the lighting of the bonfire are in this video:

RHIT Homecoming 2008 Bonfire Highlights from Paul Bogard on Vimeo.

As you can see from the video, the original plan was to use flaming arrows to light the bonfire. However, it didn't quite work, so we ended up lighting the fire in a more traditional manner.

Guessing, but without exact measurements, I'd estimate that the bonfire structure was nearly fifty feet high including the outhouse, and a line was set up to prevent us from getting closer than about fifty yards from the bonfire. Even at that distance, the heat was nearly unbearable — I ended up having to zip my jacket up and put on gloves to keep cool. I lacked insulation for my face, though.

Of course, the safety line set up didn't prevent people from trying to run up and touch the bonfire structure. One person even ran up and lit a cigar on the fire! Another person was smarter about it and had on a heat-resistant head-to-toe space suit looking outfit, and used it to stay near the bonfire to roast marshmallows.

Shortly after lighting the fire — the bottom of the structure has not yet started burning.

The outhouse on top of the fire, engulfed in flame.

People being idiots

Inferno

As seen in the video near the top of the page, someone even took it upon themselves to don some sort of heat-resistant suit and roast marshmallows. (It basically looked like a metallic space suit with a welding visor over the face.)

That outfit has got to have, like, at least 100 fire resistance.

The suit, from the back. I wasn't able to get a good front picture.

The bonfire finally starts to die down. The outhouse is no longer there — the fires are always designed so the outhouse will fall down through the center of the fire after a time.

The site of the bonfire, the next afternoon.

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