It's been 40 years ago today since the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse

[sd4chiefs]

RIP to anyone who lost their life on that awful day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_...lkway_collapse


On July 17, 1981, the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri suffered the structural collapse of two overhead walkways. Loaded with partygoers, the concrete and glass platforms cascaded down, crashing onto a tea dance in the lobby, killing 114 and injuring 216. Kansas City society was afflicted for years, with billions of dollars of insurance claims, legal investigations, city government reforms, and Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalism by The Kansas City Star.

[digger]

We were coming back from vacation and saw this on the news at my grand parents house.

[siberian khatru]

As this was during the 1981 baseball strike, then-Royals pitcher Rich Gale was working as a bartender at the Hyatt that night and helped rescue people.

[Deberg_1990]

Originally Posted by siberian khatru

As this was during the 1981 baseball strike, then-Royals pitcher Rich Gale was working as a bartender at the Hyatt that night and helped rescue people.

Wow. Interesting. Do MLB players even do part time jobs anymore?

RIP to all those who died that day….

[eDave]

Originally Posted by siberian khatru

As this was during the 1981 baseball strike, then-Royals pitcher Rich Gale was working as a bartender at the Hyatt that night and helped rescue people.

I had heard at the time that George Brett was there. Coincidentally, just read through the wiki the other day when someone linked it in a discussion about the FL building. What a humanitarion, though rough time for KC. It tore that city apart.

[bevischief]

I remember seeing this on the news. I was at my grandmother's house seeing it live on tv.

[RINGLEADER]

I saw a documentary on this recently and the number of people who ended up with their feet next to their heads was horrifying. How some of those people survived is astonishing and the screw-up that caused it was something they should have seen coming a mile away. The engineers who changed the design were big time stupid.

[Deberg_1990]

Originally Posted by RINGLEADER

The engineers who changed the design were big time stupid.

I would like to see the documentary. I imagine the screwup was something to do with trying to save money??

[Mosbonian]

My mother was a nurse who was sent there along with other medical personnel to do what they could.

She was never the same person after that...

[suzzer99]

Originally Posted by Deberg_1990

I would like to see the documentary. I imagine the screwup was something to do with trying to save money??

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_...loor%20walkway.

Investigators found that the collapse was the result of changes to the design of the walkway's steel hanger rods. The two walkways were suspended from a set of 1.25-inch-diameter (32 mm) steel hanger rods,[20] with the second-floor walkway hanging directly under the fourth-floor walkway. The fourth-floor walkway platform was supported on three cross-beams suspended by the steel rods retained by nuts. The cross-beams were box girders made from 8-inch-wide (200 mm) C-channel strips welded together lengthwise, with a hollow space between them. The original design by Jack D. Gillum and Associates specified three pairs of rods running from the second-floor walkway to the ceiling, passing through the beams of the fourth-floor walkway, with a nut at the middle of each tie rod tightened up to the bottom of the fourth-floor walkway, and a nut at the bottom of each tie rod tightened up to the bottom of the second-floor walkway. Even this original design supported only 60% of the minimum load required by Kansas City building codes.[21]

Havens Steel Company had manufactured the rods, and they objected that the whole rod below the fourth floor would have to be threaded in order to screw on the nuts to hold the fourth-floor walkway in place. These threads would be subject to damage as the fourth-floor structure was hoisted into place. Havens Steel, therefore, proposed that two separate and offset sets of rods be used: the first set suspending the fourth-floor walkway from the ceiling, and the second set suspending the second-floor walkway from the fourth-floor walkway.[22]

This design change would be fatal. In the original design, the beams of the fourth-floor walkway had to support only the weight of the fourth-floor walkway, with the weight of the second-floor walkway supported completely by the rods. In the revised design, however, the fourth-floor beams supported both the fourth and second-floor walkways, but were only strong enough for 30% of that load.[21]

The serious flaws of the revised design were compounded by the fact that both designs placed the bolts directly through a welded joint connecting two C-channels, the weakest structural point in the box beams. The original design was for the welds to be on the sides of the box beams, rather than on the top and bottom. Photographs of the wreckage show excessive deformations of the cross-section.[23] During the failure, the box beams split along the weld and the nut supporting them slipped through the resulting gap, which was consistent with reports that the upper walkway at first fell several inches, after which the nut was held only by the upper side of the box beams; then the upper side of the box beams failed as well, allowing the entire walkway to fall.[citation needed] A court order was required to retrieve the skywalk pieces from storage for examination.[24]

[Bugeater]

Originally Posted by Deberg_1990

I would like to see the documentary. I imagine the screwup was something to do with trying to save money??

There are several on YouTube

[Halfcan]

My mom was down there that night. We had a babysitter and she let us stay up late. It was the top story on the news for a week. There were no cell-phones then and no way of knowing if she had been killed. It was awful. She finally made it home late in the morning and was so shaken she could not talk about it. The only thing she ever said about it was: "It was the most terrible thing I have ever seen."


Many years later I asked her about it. She told me that, she and her date were standing on those sections that failed part of the night and had walked beneath them only a few minutes before the collapse. The sounds of the crash and then all the screams were deafening. Complete chaos. It really affected her for many years afterward.

[tmax63]

Originally Posted by Mosbonian

My mother was a nurse who was sent there along with other medical personnel to do what they could.

She was never the same person after that...

My cousin was an EMT there. I think it changed him a little as well.

[Ocotillo]

[oldman]

For those of you in the KC area :https://www.kmbc.com/article/kmbc-to...souri/36998373

It'll be re-broadcast at 8 PM tonight on KCWE (ch 29).