Hyatt Regency walkway collapse
Two overhead walkways in the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, collapsed on July 17, 1981, killing 114 people and injuring 216. Loaded with partygoers, the concrete and glass platforms crashed onto a tea dance in the lobby. Kansas City society was affected for years, with the collapse resulting in billions of dollars of insurance claims, legal investigations, and city government reforms.
Date
July 17, 1981
19:05 CDT (UTC−5)
- Hyatt Regency Kansas City
- 2345 McGee Street
- Kansas City, Missouri 64108
Structural overload resulting from design flaws[1]: iii
114
216
The Hyatt had been built just a few years before, during a nationwide pattern of fast-tracked large construction with reduced oversight and major failures. Its roof had partially collapsed during construction, and the ill-conceived skywalk design progressively degraded due to a miscommunication loop of corporate neglect and irresponsibility. An investigation concluded that it would have failed even under one-third of the weight it held that night. Convicted of gross negligence, misconduct and unprofessional conduct, the engineering company lost its national affiliation and all engineering licenses in four states, but was acquitted of criminal charges. Company owner and engineer of record Jack D. Gillum eventually claimed full responsibility for the collapse and its obvious but unchecked design flaws, and he became an engineering disaster lecturer.
The disaster contributed many lessons and reforms to engineering ethics and safety, and to emergency management. It was the deadliest non-deliberate structural failure since the collapse of Pemberton Mill over 120 years earlier, and remained the second deadliest structural collapse[2]: 4 in the United States until the collapse of the World Trade Center towers 20 years later.
Background[edit]
The Kansas City Star described the national climate of the late 1970s as "high unemployment, inflation and double-digit interest rates [that added] pressure on builders to win contracts and complete projects swiftly".[3] Described by the newspaper as fast-tracked, construction began in May 1978 on the 40-story Hyatt Regency Kansas City. There were numerous delays and setbacks, including the collapse of 2,700 square feet (250 m2) of the roof. The newspaper observed that "Notable structures around the country were failing at an alarming rate", which included the 1979 Kemper Arena roof collapse[3] and the 1978 Hartford Civic Center roof collapse. The hotel officially opened on July 1, 1980.[4]
The hotel's lobby was its defining feature, with a multi-story 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 about 120 feet (37 m) long[1]: 28 and weighed about 64,000 pounds (29,000 kg).[5] The fourth-level walkway was directly above the second-level walkway.
Casualties[edit]
A total of 114 were killed and 216 injured,[10][17] 29 of whom were rescued from the rubble.[18] Rescuers often had to dismember bodies to reach survivors among the wreckage.[7] A surgeon spent 20 minutes amputating one victim's pinned and unsalvageable leg with a chainsaw; that victim later died.[9]
Legal[edit]
The Missouri Board of Architects, Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors found the engineers at Jack D. Gillum and Associates who had approved the final drawings to be culpable of gross negligence, misconduct, and unprofessional conduct in the practice of engineering. They were acquitted of all the crimes with which they were initially charged, but the company lost its engineering licenses in Missouri, Kansas and Texas, and lost its membership with the American Society of Civil Engineers.[3][21][23]
In the months after the disaster, more than 300 lawsuits sought a cumulative total of $3 billion (equivalent to $10.1 billion in 2023).[16] Of this, at least $140 million (equivalent to $469 million in 2023) was actually awarded to victims and their families, under hotel owner Crown Center Redevelopment Corporation.[26] The single largest award was about $12 million, for a victim who required full-time medical care.[8] A class-action lawsuit seeking punitive damages was won against Crown Center Corporation, a subsidiary of Hallmark Cards.[27] That lawsuit yielded $10 million, including $6.5 million dedicated as donations to charitable and civic endeavors that Hallmark called a "healing gesture to help Kansas City put the tragedy of the skywalks' collapse behind it." Each of the approximately 1,600 hotel occupants from that night was unconditionally offered $1,000, of which 1,300 accepted by the deadline. Every defendant—including Hallmark Cards, Crown Center Corporation, architects, engineers, and the contractor—denied all legal liability, including that of the egregious engineering faults.[16]
Aftermath[edit]
The hotel reopened three months after the tragedy.[8] In 1983, local authorities reported that the $5 million hotel reconstruction made the building "possibly the safest in the country."[16] The hotel was renamed the Hyatt Regency Crown Center in 1987, and the Sheraton Kansas City at Crown Center in 2011. It has been renovated numerous times since, though the lobby retains the same layout and design.
The New York Times said the victims were soon overshadowed by the community's daily preoccupation with the disaster and its polarized attitude of blame-seeking and "vendetta" that soon targeted even the local newspapers, judges and lawyers: "Seldom has a city's establishment been so emotionally torn by catastrophe as Kansas City's was". The owner of the Kansas City Star Company guessed that the huge victim count ensured that "virtually half the town was affected directly or indirectly by the horror of the tragedy". The newspaper generated 16 months' worth of Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative coverage of the disaster—putting the newspaper at odds with the Kansas City community in general, including the management of Hallmark Cards, the parent company of the hotel's owner.[16]
Several rescuers suffered considerable stress due to their experience and later relied upon each other in an informal support group.[17]