He had been on the second stack of Aggie Bonfire, about 40 feet up from the ground, when the pile of logs came crashing down on him. Accounting major Bill Davis found himself crushed under the massive weight of Bonfire.

"They were lots of cavities which naturally formed. My right arm was folded beneath me such that my right hand was under my chest, my elbow was anywhere from underneath me to almost to my side," he said. "The cavity I was in was the width of my chest, or circumference of my chest and a little bit more because I was lying on my elbow."

Davis had seen numerous sunrises before, after waking up near dawn to work on the Stack and cutting down trees. This time, the sun came up in the sky as he was trapped below.

He was in the Intensive Care Unit for six days, during which the hospital allowed his friends to come and visit him in pairs with permission from his parents.

Davis remembered how they would walk in with worried expressions, unsure how he felt.

"I broke both my cheek bones and cracked my upper jaw and my mouth was wired shut. They were concerned about my well being and were very gentle with the questions."

He reassured them with the help of a notepad and pen, writing down jokes he could think of so that they would know he was his normal self.

"I had to write it all. I've always been a jovial person, so subconsciously I was telling them I was OK."

At the time, he said he had no idea of how severe the Bonfire collapse really was. He became aware of the deaths after he had been moved to a regular hospital room.

"I turn on the TV, basically catching up with the world. So in a lot of ways, for six days, the world stopped for me," Davis said.

He said he understood people visiting him were going through emotional turmoil, while he dealt with a more physical trauma.

"I wasn't going through that helplessness because for a while [there were] people who were out on the field thinking about how they could help, but they couldn't. It was frustrating," Davis said.

Davis said Bonfire shaped him as a person, affecting how he approaches life today.

"Having gone through my injuries and the collapse and lived, being trapped underneath for four hours, in the hospital for three weeks, going through several months of rehab on my arm and my leg, you really learn not to take the small things like walking for granted," he said.

Davis used a wheelchair for a month, and could not use crutches because his left arm was broken. He said he went from walking fine one day to not being able to stand on his feet the next day.

"[It is] a shocking reality to be placed into. [You experience] mental struggles, go through some low morale times, but you realize you have to go pushing yourself through it."

Parts of his body were shattered including his femur, left elbow and all the bones running through it. Other parts of his body were cracked and lacerated, leaving the impact of the logs on him in many ways.

Firefighters assigned to him were initially unsuccessful in extracting him from underneath the logs, but Davis kept up his spirit by talking to them.

"[They were] making sure I was OK, trying to assess my needs and keeping me from panicking and going into shock," Davis said.

One of the firefighters crawled through all the caverns and crevices formed in the collapse and climbed up through the debris to find Davis' legs and feet.

"At that time, he did not know that my femur was fractured nor did he know my pelvis was cracked," Davis said.

After four hours of being trapped under the stack, Davis remained alive. He was the third from last person to be pulled alive from the Stack.

There were many people, Davis said, who did not know whether he was alive. His roommate who had been at the Stack heard rumors that Davis was in the hospital with a broken arm. He answered the same to Davis' mother when she called.

His mother came into town the morning of the collapse and realized the full extent of what had happened. She released the information about Davis' condition and then visitors kept coming in.

He said he jokes about his injury - since he can't reach his left shoulder with his left hand, if he has an itch, he scratches with his right hand.

"I can't bend my left arm. But it does not prevent [me] from doing anything. You find ways around," he said.

Davis said it is very important to him that people knew what Bonfire was and how important it was, not only to him, but the campus as a whole.

"It energized the Aggie spirit. It affected everybody," he said.

Davis was a part of Bonfire crew in the year before the collapse. He reflected on Bonfire, and what each phase of it meant to him. He said the experience of camaraderie and friendship among those who cut trees for the stack from sunrise to sunset were some of his best experiences.

On a typical day during cut, he would wake up at 4:30 a.m. He and his friends would get to the field in a car or truck and walk over to their assigned areas, usually with four to five other guys assigned to an individual tree.

"You are sweating the whole time, your arms hurt, you're getting sore so you've got to take turns cutting on the tree," he said. "Your jackets are coming off because you're getting hot even though it's so cold outside. You are getting blisters on your hands. You are starting to feel that ache of tiredness and maybe by this time it is 9 or 10 o' clock [a.m.] and you are already up for five hours and your day is not even halfway done."

He used to print off jokes for his crew so they could have a friendly atmosphere, keeping conversations flowing so they would not feel the slump towards the end of the day.

Davis said as he looks back at this experience, he reflects on all he learned through the experience.

"These are long tiresome days and you are relying on others," Davis said. "You have to pick each other up."

Davis said the people who used to work on Bonfire with others spent their blood, sweat and tears cutting down trees and tearing them across, stacking them up the center pole.

"It breaks through the common social norms that organizations have, whether it is politics [or] anyone's perception of a socioeconomic status. Bonfire cut through all the stereotypes," he said. "Who you were was determined by what you did and not where you came from. More specifically, how hard you worked."

Davis said everyone takes away something unique from Bonfire or in any scenario of life - based on the experiences.

"I realize ultimately you leave behind a legacy of how you live your life, and if you live your life so serious that you are always worried about the certain ways you act or the way you are perceived by others and you miss out on experiences then you are really cheating yourself," Davis said. "Appreciate everything you have, even the small things."

This story is courtesy of The Battalion it's just one of more than a dozen articles the students wrote. The Bonfire Collapse was something most were too young to remember. Staff at The Battalion, have put together a 20-page special edition of Bonfire related stories. To read more stories from the special edition click the links below.