DENVER -- Nearly 30 Air Force Academy cadets required medical care, with six of them hospitalized, after an annual tradition to mark the first snowfall of the season turned into an out-of-control melee, officials said Wednesday.

An unauthorized ritual last week called "First Shirt/First Snow," in which freshman cadets try to throw their cadet sergeant into a snowbank, grew violent and resulted in injuries, the academy said in a statement.

"A relatively small number of cadets chose to take part in this unsafe activity," Brig. Gen. Gregory Lengyel said in the statement. "This incident was unacceptable."

The six cadets who required hospitalization after last Thursday's incident have all been released, and the 21 others were treated for "bruises and/or lacerations" at the academy's cadet clinic, the school said.

Lengyel, who serves as the commandant of cadets, said school officials are investigating the incident. "Our Air Force expects better. I expect better, and I'm confident the cadets will learn and grow from this."

An internal email about the incident obtained by the Air Force Times newspaper, reportedly written by Brig. Gen. Dana Born to school administrators, said the annual ritual "has turned into a brawl" between freshmen and upperclassmen.

"This ritual has devolved to become increasingly violent, with significant numbers of cadets requiring medical care over the past two years," The Times cited the email as saying, adding that the latest injuries included concussions, an arm bite and cuts that required stitches.

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“Obviously, this has gotten out of hand and cannot be repeated,” Born wrote. “There is no way we can condone or defend this.”

The Times said the internal memo indicated Lengyel might allow the tradition to continue if cadets can show it can be conducted with "good order and discipline and proper risk management."

Located in Colorado Springs, 60 miles south of Denver, the academy has an enrollment of about 4,100 cadets, and graduates are commissioned second lieutenants in the U.S. Air Force.

The reported incident is a fresh blow to the reputation of the Air Force, which has dealt with a number of scandals in recent years.

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In 2003, the academy was accused of failing to investigate numerous incidents of sexual assaults on the campus.

In 2005, an Air Force panel concluded that officers and faculty members periodically used their positions to promote their Christian faith and failed to accommodate the religious needs of non-Christian cadets.

The academy has also been hit with several cheating and drug-use incidents in recent years, according to the Colorado Springs Independent.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The Waldo Canyon fire has been the most destructive in state history, but it has galvanized the community here in ways that are unprecedented too.

In just a few days, as emergency services ramped up and firefighters beat back the blaze that destroyed 346 homes and scorched 18,000 acres, some unlikely partners pulled together an extravaganza to celebrate the Fourth of July, and raise money to get victims back on their feet.

The Colorado Springs Philharmonic, originally scheduled to play at the Air Force Academy fireworks celebration—which was canceled -- will headline a concert in the 7,500-seat World Arena with the Flying W Wranglers, blue grass musicians who were left jobless after their usual venue, the Flying W Ranch, was destroyed in the fire.

A popular news anchor from the local NBC affiliate television station KOAA will emcee the event, The Community Rises, which will be produced by Rocky Mountain Public Television and streamed by all the local commercial television and radio stations while raising fire relief funds through a telethon.

Slideshow: Celebrating Fourth of July

Erik S. Lesser / EPA

Americans celebrate 236 years of independence with parades, fireworks, hot dogs and family fun.

Launch slideshow

The underwriters of the program are perhaps the most unlikely local partners of all: The alternative left-leaning weekly Colorado Springs Independent and Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian organization that has its international headquarters here.

"We’ve had fierce battles with Focus over the years," said John Weiss, publisher of the Independent. "But we needed to show we are a community united … and give people something to do on the Fourth of July since the fireworks are canceled."

Also appearing at the fundraiser are Isaac Slade of The Fray, Michael Martin Murphey and Flash Cadillac. Tickets for the event were distributed for free, and all proceeds from the telethon will go to a local victims’ assistance fund administered by United Way, said Weiss.

In a one-and-only rehearsal on Tuesday, Philharmonic cellist Camilla Bonzo said she was sight-reading her way through the music.

PBS producer and director Scott Jones said he had just finished cobbling together a crew that afternoon by borrowing staff from many of the local stations. Jones is responsible for producing and feeding the event via satellite to all the other broadcasters, a job he didn’t realize he was doing until Friday morning.

"We used to do big events like this once in a while," Jones says. "But we spent months preparing for them."

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COLORADO SPRING, Colo. — When evacuation orders came at 3 p.m. last Tuesday, the animal population at the Humane Society here exploded. Residents in the projected path of the Waldo Canyon fire came streaming in, seeking shelter for pets that they couldn’t take to evacuation centers and hotels. Others who were too far from home to get back in time called the society in a panic, requesting that their pets be rescued.

It was a painful and sometimes tearful scene at the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region.

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"Animals are such a comfort to people," said spokesperson Erica Meyer. "People had to leave not only the comfort of their homes but the comfort of their animals."

In a matter of days, with staff working 24-7, the nonprofit organization took in 439 displaced pets brought in by their owners — mostly dogs and cats, but also rabbits, guinea pigs, birds and turtles. Between Tuesday and Sunday, animal law enforcement officers rescued another 108 animals from the evacuation zone, including one woman’s beloved chickens.

"Apparently it was really close," Meyer said of the eleventh-hour rescue. "The lady said 'I don’t care if my house burns down.' She just wanted her babies. Her chickens were her babies."

The Humane Society set up special areas to care for the displaced pets — including an emergency shelter in donated space — registering, vaccinating and providing medications to pets, one by one.

The society drew on its 2,000-strong army of volunteers to walk, pet, feed and clean up after this massive menagerie, while handling its usual clientele — some 40 to 60 abandoned, stray and feral animals a day, Meyer said.

As the crisis subsides, many of the evacuated pets have gone home with their humans, and the emergency facility has been closed.

About 50 displaced animals remained on Tuesday, including the two chickens, and some of them likely will be in for the long haul because their homes were among the 346 that burned to the ground last week, said Meyer.

"We will care for them until they are united with their families," she said.

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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — When the wind pushed the Waldo Canyon blaze over the crest of the mountains toward this community one week ago, young business owners and designers here set out to raise money for the victims.

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"There was a real feeling of helplessness," says one of the initiators, Tucker Wannamaker, who owns a small marketing firm. "You just wanted to do something."

The goal was to design and sell enough T-shirts to raise $1,500, which they figured was more than they could donate if they each wrote a check.

Wild Fire Tees

But they miscalculated — by 21,300 percent. With the aid of social media, online orders for their artfully designed Wild Fire Tees generated $320,000 within six days. They said they plan to donate 100 percent of the proceeds to the food bank Care and Share and the Colorado Red Cross, two organizations at the heart of the relief operation here.

They quickly realized they couldn’t handle the volume of printing in house, so they looped in a local T-shirt shop to help, and now are arranging larger-scale production in Denver, said Wannamaker.

Now the group -- a dozen or so business owners and designers, along with assorted partners and babies in tow -- are hunkered down, vetting new designs and answering calls for orders while working out the logistics of delivering the goods. 

Red Cross volunteers in the trenches for wildfire in Colorado

Orders even came from Canada, Denmark and Britain, Wannamaker says, with a huge spike of orders right after the majority of houses were destroyed last week.

One of the latest ideas is for people to donate money for T-shirts that are to be given to firefighters as tokens of appreciation. Wild Fire Tees has sold 650 of them – well on their way to 1,000 orders needed to outfit the entire army battling the blaze.

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The sudden volume of money coming in for T-shirts set off alarms at PayPal and set the little group scrambling to complete registration of their nonprofit with the federal government — a headache, one of the team says, but a good problem to have.

Wild Fire Tees has adjusted their fundraising goal, to $500,000 for distribution to wildfire relief statewide.

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Matt Rivera / msnbc.com

Red Cross volunteer Steve Bayer has had some rough, even heartbreaking, assignments over the past 12 years, including 9/11.

Colorado Springs, Colo. — It seems wrong to describe Red Cross volunteer Steve Bayer, 78, as a retiree. Waldo Canyon is his 37^th stint as a disaster relief volunteer since 2000, when he stopped working as a manufacturer’s representative for women’s clothing.

"I sold dresses," says the Florida transplant, in the broad New York accent of his hometown.

Bayer, a gregarious man who has what he calls a “real life” as well — going on cruises with his wife, visiting grandchildren in Boston and Long Island --  is a Red Cross “advance public affairs” officer. He is deployed to disasters to help handle the influx of national press who, like a disaster itself, can quickly overwhelm the resources of a local Red Cross chapter. 

 "The organization empowers you," says Bayer. "It’s a wonderful way to give back to the community."

Bayer, and people like him — many of them retirees — make up an army of 650,000 Red Cross volunteers, about 94 percent of the organization’s workforce. Bayer is in Colorado from his home in Boynton Beach, Fla., one of 325 volunteers from all over the country helping victims of the Waldo Canyon wildfire.

"They are the heart and soul," says Anne Marie Borrego, a staff spokesperson who came from American Red Cross headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Volunteers come with a wide array of skills and background. Bayer, for instance, is a former Air Force pilot. He also demonstrated his uniquely aggressive New York driving skills in an effort to deliver two journalists to the scene of relief efforts.

"I’m a New York driver," he said. "I make no bones about it."

Each morning, volunteers in Colorado Springs gather at a temporary Red Cross operation set up in a vacant office building.  During the initial relief effort, when evacuations were required for some 32,000 people, they ran shelters. As people have been able to return to homes or find alternative lodging, those shelters have closed down and volunteers have conducted house-to-house damage assessments in the worst-hit subdivisions. Now they are moving into the next phase — setting up to interview affected residents to assess their individual needs — whether it is clothes, tools for clearing damaged property or mental health care.

Volunteers make the Red Cross tick, and the work also seems to make volunteers like Bayer tick.

One reward is being part of the vast nationwide network of volunteers, connecting with colleagues from one deployment to another.

Sometimes there’s a brush with celebrity — as when Bayer met President Obama over the weekend -- which Bayer considers “a perk.”

"We shook hands and I said, ‘Thank you for being here, Mr. President," Bayer said. "He looked at me and said. 'No, no. Thank YOU for being here. He meant all of us, of course."

Colorado relief work: beginning of the long haul

Bayer has had some rough assignments, some heartbreaking.

One of them came in his own backyard at the time — volunteering in New York after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center. Bayer remembers being on the phone with a widow.

"She was one of four women on her street who lost her husband that day," he says. "What do you say? I just stumbled through." 

In his adopted home state of Florida, Bayer is also active in the local chapter of the Red Cross, which is frequently the first organization to help house fire victims after firefighters finish their work.

As a result Bayer’s car is stocked with the kinds of things people need — items like flip flops for the harried father who ran out of the house in the middle of the night, stuffed animals for frightened children.

"I have put people into hotels in the middle of the night that had never even been in a hotel," he says, putting his hand to his heart. "It just grabs you."

As he was leaving Arkansas two years ago after a Red Cross flood response, Bayer found a note from the housekeeper at his hotel.

"It said, 'You’ll never know the number of people you affected by being here’," he recalled. "These are the things that keep you going."

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