28 years ago 114 people died when the skywalk at the Hyatt in KC collapsed

[proud2BlibKansan]

Before:



After:











On July 17, 1981, approximately 2,000 people had gathered in the atrium to participate in and watch a dance contest. Dozens stood on the walkways. At 7:05 PM, the walkways on the second, third, and fourth floor were packed with visitors as they watched over the active lobby, which was also full of people. The fourth floor bridge was suspended directly over the second floor bridge, with the third floor walkway set off to the side several meters away from the other two. Construction issues led to 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 the second floor walkway. This new design could barely handle the dead load weight of the structure itself, much less the weight of the spectators standing on it. The connection failed and both walkways crashed one on top of the other and then into the lobby below, killing 114 people and injuring more than 200 others.<3>

<skip>

The Missouri Board of Architects, Professional Engineers, and Land Surveyors convicted the engineers employed by Jack D. Gillum and Associates who had signed off on the final drawings of gross negligence, misconduct, and unprofessional conduct in the practice of engineering; they all lost their engineering licenses in the states of Missouri and Texas and their membership to ASCE.<9> While Jack D. Gillum and Associates itself was cleared of criminal negligence, it was stripped of its license to be an engineering firm.<10>

At least $140 million was awarded to victims and their families in both judgments and settlements in subsequent civil lawsuits; a large amount of this money came from Crown Center Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hallmark Cards which was the owner of the actual hotel franchise (like most hoteliers, Hyatt runs on the franchisor/franchisee system). Life and health insurance companies probably absorbed even larger uncompensated losses in policy payouts.

The Hyatt tragedy remains a classic model for the study of engineering ethics and errors. Gillum's chief engineer continues to share his experiences with others, in the hope that the mistakes which led to the Hyatt disaster will not be repeated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_Regency_walkway_collapse

[ColbertWatcher]

1. I remember when this happened. What a shock. k+r, n/t

[tridim]

2. Gawd, I remember that night vividly. We had friends there, but they were okay.

It's probably the worst disaster in KC's history.

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. For years it was rare to meet anyone here who didn't know someone who had died that night

I couldn't go back in that hotel for years.

[begin_within]

3. Wow, I remember hearing about that.

I had forgotten in the meantime the magnitude of the tragedy. How awful and how sad for the families of those people.

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. I remember hearing about that. :^(

[babylonsister]

5. I remember that, but 28 years ago?

Geeze. Sigh.

I do hope lessons were learned.

[proud2BlibKansan]

11. I am still surprised no one went to prison

I did know a kid in high school whose family business was one of the contractors. They went bankrupt and never did recover. That was kind of sad. But not as sad as all the people who died.

[babylonsister]

12. I guess some progress has happened. Today they'd probably

go to prison. One can hope.

[proud2BlibKansan]

15. It was so complicated

The engineers blamed the steel company. Then someone else blamed the architect. It went on for years. Finally they just took engineering licenses away and that was it.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. WOW this means... oh never mind, yes I am getting old

for the record that was a textbook for rescue operations on the dos and don't

Yes folks it was bad, but the mistakes made there by multiple people, before and after, have saved people after the fact.

[proud2BlibKansan]

16. My son was 2; he is now 30. Yes I feel old.

I don't remember any screwups with the rescue. What happened?

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. It was at the command level, it was somewhat screwed up

and it became a teaching example and led to the standardization in the MCI system used in North America.

Multiple Casualty Incident

Only reason I know this is... not only did I take the course, I taught it.

Good news, most people never noticed... as is most pressers never know what is going on at a disaster scene

But the way it went was several people tried to take command, The pissing contest didn't last long. But it cost a little time.

Because of that these days the first on scene becomes on scene commander until somebody with more training, not necessarily fruit salad, shows up and does a formal transfer of command.

To give a concrete example I had command transfered to me by onsite EMT basics that got to the scene well before I did, and I transfered command to the Rescue people more than once. On more complex scenes you may even have a person in charge of the rescue, another in charge of medical care, and yet another in charge of communications and the ever so lovely transport. Those are very large scenes, and hopefully you will have a command truck.

http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/ems/policy/01-02.htm

This comes straight from that disaster.

And the above one is but one summary...

[proud2BlibKansan]

20. DH says he remembers paramedics being trained differently now because of the Hyatt

And if there were any screwups, it didn't make any difference. Most who died could not have been saved anyway. They were crushed by thousands of pounds of steel.

I do remember they talked about all the people from all over who rushed down there to help. They were carrying victims to the hospital in the backs of station wagons. Fortunately there are 2 hospitals only a block from the Hyatt.

Then at one point they announced on TV and radio that no one else should come down there because they needed to leave room for the rescue workers to do their jobs.

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. Yeah the changes came in the way you do triage

It used to be... and I do remember them good old days since I was trained that way... that you went and treated the first person you found, and so on. It didn't matter how salvageable or not they were.

These days you got a very specific protocol for Triage.

I got that one in Mexico City AFTER San Juaniico, when the Red Cross woke up to the need to train all in what they called advanced Triage.

This is the origin of the START protocol system

http://www.paems.org/manual06/Disaster/START%20Triage%20Protocol.pdf

Before that, we lost way too much time. Oh and yes I remember using it at a train wreck. The kid I let go still haunts me.

Playing god is not for the faint of heart.

But START goes straight to that incident as well. It probably has saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the US alone... and given that the standard is used across North America... probably millions if I add the US, Canada and Mexico.

[givemebackmycountry]

7. For some reason, I remember that event and it has stayed with me...

Proud -

I was living in Denver at the time and I was working for Mountain Bell and I recall seeing the news reports and I was fascinated and horrified all at the same time.

The thought of all those people dancing and having a wonderful time, and in a flash, it was chaos.

When I moved to Kansas City in 1991, the Hyatt was one of the first places I had to check out.
One thing I learned very quickly was never to bring that up to a Kansas City native.
They did NOT want to discuss it.
And that was most of them, especially the old timers.

Good catch.
I remember seeing a documentary on KCPT about that one evening.
I was transfixed, and I didn't move until the credits rolled.

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. It was so horrrific

We were camping at Lake Perry. Had no idea it happened. Next morning it was raining so we broke camp and went to the marina for breakfast at a little restaurant there. We walked in and it was eerily quiet. The waitress was crying. It was so freaky. We finally asked what was going on and she told us. We couldn't have driven home any faster.

Found out later that day that a good friend lost both of his parents.

The funerals went on for days. It was so sad.

[applegrove]

8. I remember that.

[scheming daemons]

9. I remember that... I was in 9th grade......

Shoddy engineering.

[exboyfil]

26. The original engineering design was not was built

Often a problem in engineering. Originally the bars holding the lower level were supposed to pass through the mid level, but the design was changed to have these bars attach to the mid level. This forced the bars holding the mid level to carry the weight of both levels. If took a large number of people dancing on it to bring down the flawed actually built structure.

The civil engineer and architect should have caught the modification in the original intended design.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

28. BINGO!

an engineer that I use in products cases was part of the team doing the investigation. That was precisely the problem. It doubled the stress on the middle supports, causing them to reach, even exceed their designed capacity. AND, the evidence was that people were dancing in time on the catwalk. Waves are dangerous things, and impart a great deal of energy. 40 people jumping up and down in time creates such a wave.

[eppur_se_muova]

37. Soldiers marching in formation are told to break step when crossing a bridge ...

for precisely that reason.

But it was basically a design flaw; the original design would have been virtually impossible to implement. It would have required screw threads halfway along the length of a rod and screw threads at the bottom end to *both* be threaded through a hole in the two bridges at the same time. When this was replaced with a system of two rods both threaded at both ends, it looked equivalent, but as pointed out above, doubled the stress on the upper set of threads, which was what ultimately failed.

The whole problem could have been prevented if the architect had not insisted that the bridges be perfectly flat, straight, linear slabs, all for the sake of STYLE. If the bridges had been designed for function before style, they would have had arches or supports. It was only the insistence on a "modern", spare, rectilinear look that forced the engineering to the edge of what was practical.

Sounds like all the engineers got penalized, but I doubt the architect did. Unfortunately, this is pretty much the law in most states -- engineers are held liable for any failures of buildings they work on FOR LIFE, but architects aren't held legally responsible.

[exboyfil]

38. This is why an engineer must say no

That is reflected in their licensing. Even captive engineers (those who work for companies) know to say no to something which is not safe. This is what is taught in our engineering classes. The KC disaster was one of our cases. I know at my employer we have a rigorous review for any safety critical features, and we have plenty of "devil's advocates" that push the engineers to demonstrate that something is safe.

Architects are not trained and cannot take on the responsibility of engineers (just as stylists and marketing managers cannot). When the tail wags the dog, then you get disasters. The two engineers involved claimed they did not know about the changes even though they stamped the revised plans. It turns out even as designed, at least according to what I read, they engineers did not have the proper safety factors built in to meet KC code.

I don't know if it would have made a difference, but no Civil Engineer had onsite responsibility for the design. The Civil Engineering body later changed their requirements for the management of projects based upon this disaster. The two engineers involved had their licenses pulled, and, ironically enough, one of them later went on to speak and write about the disaster.

[blondeatlast]

13. I remember all too well; I had relatives at that convention (thankfully unhurt). nt

[MadHound]

17. Subtle but flawed design is a kind way of putting it

POS built by idiots seemed to be the consensus opinion of the day.

[proud2BlibKansan]

18. It is still a bizarre design.

You have to go from the 1st floor in the lobby to the 3rd floor to get back down to the 2nd floor.

[TheDebbieDee]

22. I remembered that.........when the first bulletins were

broadcasts about a structural problem at the Hyatt, I initially assumed that the spinning restaurant at the top of the hotel had somehow fallen off the building.

[proud2BlibKansan]

24. My dad said the same thing!

That's a really cool restaurant, BTW.

[Bluestar]

23. I worked in the building right next door at Hallmark Cards and one of my

friends was killed. I drove past the Hyatt going home approximately 45 minutes before it happened. It was a horrible nightmare that I remember like it was yesterday.

Hallmark did their best to honor their workers who were killed, but also did insensitive things like making us hold meetings at the Hyatt within 6 weeks of the tragedy. It cost them about $100 Million. They wanted to move past it ASAP. I'll never forget how difficult it was for the friends and family of the victims and for those who were left permanently injured. It is something I will never forget.

[proud2BlibKansan]

25. I couldn't go back in that hotel for YEARS

I was there last year and got the chills when I walked into that lobby.

[Blue_Tires]

27. an old friend i knew from grad school was an editor of the old Kansas City Times

that night...very chilling stuff...


the incident stuck in my mind when i first read a book in high school about how technology fails...incredible negligence on the part of the builders....

[proud2BlibKansan]

29. That was the best newspaper

I miss it a lot.

[8 track mind]

30. I remember this as well

I was a kid living in Springfield, Mo. It was about the same time that the King City Car Wash exploded, killing a bunch of people. A redneck decided to wash his truck at this automatic car wash. He was running the truck off of propane and one of the brushes ripped the vapor line off the tank that was in the bed of the truck. It just so happened that the water heaters at the car wash were operated on propane as well, and kaboooooom....

The building was leveled and the lumber yard next to it had most of the roof blown off of it. Anybody in Mo at that time remember this?

[proud2BlibKansan]

31. OMG I had never heard about that

Sounds horrific.

[8 track mind]

32. i had to have been in the third or fourth grade at the time

that it happened. pretty insane.

[xenussister]

33. I almost went there that night

A friend invited me, but I got obsessed playing, of all things, Pac-Man at a downtown restaurant (Washington Street Station) and lost track of time. I was all dressed for it and everything. I felt terrible standing up my friend, but not so much, since he was with a larger group of his friends (I didn't know them). They were all ok, thank goodness.

My future husband's future doctor was one of the on-site triage doctors. If I remember correctly, he had to amputate a man's leg to get him free.

I remember being so amazed that they found survivors under all that flattened steel.

[justiceischeap]

34. I was ten or so when that happened... What I remember about that night.

I was sitting in my best friend's living room with a huge bag of Dorito's (original) and Coca-cola getting ready to watch the Elvira Friday Night Fright show. The broadcast was interrupted by a special news cast and they never showed the movie that night. I have to chuckle when I think back on it because I remember being so scared that Dan Quisenberry was there and that he may have been too injured to be a relief pitcher for the Royals any longer (if you couldn't tell he was my fav relief pitcher).

Then a few days later a neighbor of mine worked in a camera shop and had photos from the collapse. I saw things in those photos that no ten-year old should see.

That was a horrific night.

[proud2BlibKansan]

35. Was Quisenberry the Royals player who helped with the rescue?

I remember there was one who was there all night helping out. Or maybe it was a Chiefs player?

[justiceischeap]

36. I doubt Quisenberry helped.

He was actually injured. I think he had a bad cut on his hand. I remember seeing his hand all bandaged up. Unfortunately, he died 17 years later of brain cancer.