The Mid-City New Year’s Eve Bonfire is on again. After a meeting between the fire department and Mid-City representatives, efforts to make it safer were agreed on. According to the Times-Picayune:

The arrangement reached Tuesday calls for a controlled fire in a 12-by-12-foot area , surrounded by a 2-foot-high metal retaining wall, Woodridge said. Barricades surrounding the retaining wall will be set back a few additional feet from the fire. A welder’s cloth will cover the ground in the designated bullpen area, designed to catch any falling embers or ash.

Since fireworks aren’t permitted in Orleans Parish, fireworks will be prohibited.

The depressing thing about all of this is that the city found a way to insert itself in a meaningful way into an event that didn’t need it. For as long as anyone can remember, the bonfire has been going on without incident, but the city has decided that its supervision is required in a way that it never was before.

Equally depressing is how quickly and easily people agree with authority:

Virginia Blanque, vice president of the Mid-City Neighborhood Organization, said she and officials agreed a scaled-down bonfire is much better than no event at all.

“We worried we would have a bigger problem if people took matters into their own hands and tried to do it anyway, ” Blanque said. “People were angry and felt their tradition was being taken away.”

Blanque said the group needs only to secure a liability bond, which she said is a minor matter.

“Everything is a go, ” she said. But, she warned, this is not going to be like last year.

“We are at risk of losing this tradition if people don’t behave, ” she said.

According to Blanque, the things we used to do – shoot off fireworks, play near the fire – are now forms of misbehavior because the fire chief said so. Oh, and making a big fire is also now a form of misbehavior:

Discarded Christmas trees will keep the fire burning, but it will not be anywhere near as high as the infernos in previous years, Woodridge said.

“They had trees stacked up real high before, ” he said. “That won’t happen because we’ll be monitoring the situation.”

Moderate Christmas, everybody, and have a Tepid New Year!