Hyatt Regency Walkway collapse

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The Hyatt Regency walkway collapse took place at the Hyatt Regency Kansas City hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, on July 17, 1981. Two walkways, one directly above the other, collapsed onto a tea dance being held in the hotel's lobby. The falling walkways killed 114 and injured 216.

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One of the defining features of the hotel was its lobby, which incorporated a multistory atrium spanned by elevated walkways suspended from the ceiling. These steel, glass and concrete crossings connected the second, third and fourth floors between the north and south wings. The walkways were approximately 120 ft (37 m) long and weighed approximately 64,000 lb (29,000 kg). The fourth level walkway aligned directly above the second level walkway.

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On the evening of Friday, July 17, 1981, approximately 1,600 people gathered in the atrium to participate in and watch a tea dance. At 7:05 p.m. local time (00:05 UTC; July 18) the second-level walkway held approximately 40 people with more on the third and an additional 16 to 20 on the fourth level who watched the activities of the crowd in the lobby below. The fourth-floor bridge was suspended directly over the second-floor bridge, with the third-floor walkway offset several meters from the others. Construction difficulties resulted in a subtle but flawed design change that doubled the load on the connection between the fourth-floor walkway support beams and the tie rods carrying the weight of both walkways. This new design was barely adequate to support the dead load weight of the structure itself, much less the added weight of the spectators. According to the National Geographic documentary programme Seconds From Disaster, many of the survivors reported hearing popping noises coming from above them shortly before the collapse. Only moments later, the fourth-floor walkway suddenly dropped several inches under the spectators, before falling completely onto the second-floor walkway. Both walkways later crashed to the lobby floor below, resulting in 111 deaths at the scene and 219 injuries. Three additional victims died after being transported to hospitals, bringing the total number of deaths to 114.

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Dr. Joseph Waeckerle, former chief of Kansas City's emergency medical system, directed the rescue effort establishing a makeshift morgue in a ground floor exhibition area, using the hotel's driveway and front lawn as a triage area and helping to organize the wounded by greatest need for medical care. Those people who could walk were instructed to leave the hotel to simplify the rescue effort; those mortally injured were told they were going to die and given morphine. Often, rescuers had to dismember bodies to reach survivors among the wreckage. One victim's right leg was trapped under an I-beam and had to be amputated by a surgeon, a task which was completed with a chainsaw.

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Investigators concluded that the basic problem was a lack of proper communication between Jack D. Gillum and Associates and Havens Steel. In particular, the drawings prepared by Jack D. Gillum and Associates were only preliminary sketches but were interpreted by Havens as finalized drawings. Jack D. Gillum and Associates failed to review the initial design thoroughly, and accepted Havens' proposed plan without performing basic calculations that would have revealed its serious intrinsic flaws — in particular, the doubling of the load on the fourth-floor beams. It was later revealed that when Havens called Jack D. Gillum and Associates to propose the new design, the engineer they spoke with simply approved the changes over the phone, without viewing any sketches or performing calculations.

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