Fast-Tracked Failure: The Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse

thanks to magellan tv for sponsoring this episode in 1981 design changes miscommunications and a culture of fast-tracked construction led to the hyatt regency walkway collapse a tragic and preventable structural failure in kansas city missouri that claimed over 100 innocent lives [Music] [Music] it was just we were standing there and all of a sudden it was on top of us people were praying people calling for help and it was so crowded there at the edge of the dance floor from watching the dance contest that no one had a chance to run away from it if you're like me your interest in stories like these isn't just out of morbid curiosity but in truly learning their causes and how we can prevent the preventable going forward as a society crash of the century the story of the tenerife airport disaster is one such example where chain of failures communication breakdown and preventable human error caused the deadliest aviation disaster in history with episodes just like the crash of the century 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the crown center an 85-acre location of fountains public parks high-rise hotels retail and more has long been a primary destination in the downtown kansas city area the tea dances of the time period were big band big draw events attracting large crowds from 20 somethings to seniors at the hyatt crown center in kansas city every friday partygoers would arrive in the late afternoon dining drinking and dancing the evening away held in the hyatt's four-story grand atrium the majority of seating the evening's band the main dance floor dining and activities all centralized on the first floor with the surrounding second through fourth floors used mostly for those spectating lounging or dancing away from the main crowd with the terrace balconies and three skywalk style walkways offering impressive verticality and easy access to equally impressive views overlooking the party below these tea dances filled the massive atrium making it a lively happy bustling place to dance your cares away and usher in the weekend almost exactly one year after the hyatt location's july 1980 grand opening the tea dance crowd on friday july 17 1981 by 1900 hours had reached the size of roughly 1 500 to 2 000 with dozens occupying the walkways above and just as the band returned from their break to pick the music back up at 705 the topmost walkway on the fourth floor the one holding the second floor walkway ripped loose from its support rods at first making a loud pop heard by some then instantly and simultaneously sending both walkways crashing to the floor below pancaking each other in the process the third floor walkway remaining unaffected and still in place the collapse created such an unimaginably gruesome scene that it would haunt survivors and rescuers for the rest of their lives the sheer force of these collapsing walkways experienced by those both on and underneath rendered many victims nearly unrecognizable or largely unrecoverable causing such a great deal of trauma to those first responders and survivors and all this in the days before ptsd was well understood that when attempting to ascertain the approximate number of occupants on the walkways at time of collapse investigators like the national bureau of standards would in a rare move for such an agency later utilize only local press interviews afterwards for eyewitness accounts stating this investigation did not include any organized effort to interview or solicit eyewitness accounts of the collapse not because of any unwillingness to cooperate but primarily because of great difficulty in recalling and discussing the event the national bureau of standards or nbs now known as the national institute of standards and technology or nist chose to forego this portion of the investigation concluding that a rough estimate of 63 persons total occupied the second and fourth floor walkways at the time of collapse amidst the chaos and confusion water was pouring into and filling the atrium floor putting trapped victims at further risk blasting out from high pressure sprinkler pipes ripped apart when the walkways fell made all the more perilous by live arcane electrical wires now strewn about for the same reason rescue would be carried out all through the night the kansas city fire department and police department within the first moments then by 7 52 pm after calls for additional assistance 100 plus firefighters emts doctors and nurses would be on scene working in whatever way they could to rescue recover determine needs for triage and attempt to comfort those still alive trapped in the rubble in addition to forklifts and other equipment already on scene by 10 30 pm a heavy crane would arrive and be on standby it wasn't until just after a.m however when the first large section could be lifted span u89 after which at 4 30 am the final survivor would be pulled from the debris at 6 00 am the next span to be lifted u-78 revealed and confirmed grim expectations 31 victims crushed and lifeless beneath the rescuers first responders their coordination decisive action and bravery in the face of such unimaginable circumstances was legendary and has been well recognized over the years in total after investigations hospitalizations and victim identifications it was determined that over 200 were injured and 114 souls were lost named for hallmark's crown logo and opened in 1971 kansas city's crown center would be founded by hallmark cards incorporated intended to transform this area of downtown from deteriorating parking lots and dilapidated buildings to one of the area's main attractions through an urban renewal project of verticality in retail residential office and event space along with top hotels outdoor public parks water features and more and thus the crown center redevelopment corporation was also formed in 1976 crown would commission structural engineering consultation and design duties to gce international incorporated in structural engineering services to pbn dml architects and planners incorporated for the upcoming 750 room 45 story hyatt hotel the general contractor would be eldridge construction company who would in turn subcontract much of this work out to haven steel company the primary subcontracted portion being the four-story atrium lobby connecting the north high-rise with the south function and guest recreation wing by spring of 1978 construction was underway on the hyatt and like many similar projects in other booming u.s cities of this era fast tracking the process from start to finish would be a primary goal for many parties involved in the early months of 1979 much back and forth took place though between gce the consulting engineers and contractor haven steele regarding the atrium's walkways drawings revised in an overall plan of single support rods for the fourth and second floor walkways done away with at the request of haven steel in favor of a double hanger rod box beam connection in which to suspend each walkway these revisions would receive the approval of engineering firm gce specifically engineer of record jack d gilliam's personal stamp of approval in october of 1979 however with construction of the atrium well underway a 2 700 plus square foot portion of the atrium's roof collapsed fortunately causing no injuries but still drawing the attention of inspectors and prompted crown development to bring on an independent engineering firm cedan page to investigate the incident this investigative firm though would only seek to determine cause of the roof collapse their scope of work not including any sort of design review analysis of engineering revisions nor any other portion of the atrium under construction and just a month later in november 1979 the owners and architects gave assurances of the entire atrium's quote overall safety noteworthy and causing related concern around the same time just a few months prior in that same year the roof of kansas city's kemper arena had collapsed fortunately while unoccupied and with lack of injury but largely due to the time period's overarching phenomenon of fast-tracked construction a lack of redundancy in the roof trusses and underestimation in the gathering of roof-collected rainwater ironically just one day prior a convention for the american institute of architects was held just half a mile away from the kemper arena a prominent institution that had bestowed their honor award upon the arena in 1976 considering it quote one of the finest buildings in the nation also notable was in january of 1978 the hartford civic center's roof collapsed just six hours after the yukon vs umass men's college basketball game in hartford connecticut luckily with no injuries a tragedy narrowly avoided this major collapse was first blamed on rooftop snow but investigators found it to be glaringly due to miscommunications of responsibility during construction disparities between original design versus actual construction and a specific lack of any peer review or design quality control process all of which proving to be yet another case of fast-tracked construction that due to such pathetically underestimated loads investigators discovered the hartford civic center's roof had been bowing and beginning to fail even since the first days of construction work would continue on the atrium at the hyatt fast forward to july of 1980 with construction now complete the hyatt regency hotel and its grand atrium were now ready for guests kansas city was shook by this incident to its core trauma counseling the sights sounds and even smells rescuers dealt with and there were so many lost that it was said city-wide nearly everyone had some sort of connection to someone involved with or lost in this tragedy between july 21st and august 13th recovery operations of the walkway spans and their supporting rods would commence lifting them with straps and crossbeams to be relocated to a secure warehouse nearby for storage and controlled analysis by nbs investigators engineers and scientists this along with kmbc's videotape photographic evidence gathered prior to debris removal testimony and investigation of key parties comprehensive lab studies combined with mock-up and physical simulation testing and the limited eyewitness accounts it was a near 10-month long investigative process with nbs's final report being issued in may of 1982 then followed up by a more than two year long trial process that we'll cover in this video shortly widely known is that the failure was ultimately down to poor design in the supporting rods revisions late in the process changing the second and fourth floor portion from three pairs of single rods suspended from the ceiling to three pairs suspending the fourth floor segment and a second set of rods offset to the inside of the box beams the second story walkway suspended in the same fashion in the original designs the upper nut only carries the load of the four-floor walkway with the single rod transferring the load uniformly the second floor at the bottom of the rod would work on the same principle now with the revised design however the lower nut on the fourth floor's box beam connection carries the weight of the fourth floor and second floor walkways combined as if to be one unit like trying to pull a large stalled vehicle with a rope one team all grabs hold of a single rope spanning the length of the team but the other is only allowed the person in front to grab the rope attached to the vehicle the rest required to pull a separate rope attached via harness to the leader whose grip must now compensate for the pulling action of the entire team behind as well the leader may be able to maintain grip briefly like the walkways holding their own weight for a time but his grip will quickly become the weak point like the ends of the box beams the box beam would split at the welds and the downward force would pull it around the uppermost rod's nut fastened below the box beam and thus all that remains suspended from the ceiling where the walkways fell were those three pairs of rods with their nuts still attached box beam hanger rod connection 9ue was considered by the nbs as first to give way stating there was also evidence to support the bottom weld having already given way sometime prior to the spectators gathering on the walkways oscillations were also observed according to some eyewitness accounts initiated by dancing spectators however nbs investigators found this to be negligible and not directly additive stating walking or dancing on the walkways would not have been significant in comparison to the static loads rarely is a single party or a point of failure if ever to blame though the breakdowns in communication the group think fragile egos prioritization of schedule or cost over proper calculations mismanagement of responsibility chains of failure like these are where you'll find your true need for more awareness the part of the process where big fragile egos say no keep prying eyes away is where the light needs to be shine the brightest to affect any real change before all the technical designs new policies procedures and proper follow-through can even be effective as we've seen in so many of these videos now there has to be parties involved that care about public safety and doing the right thing to begin with when those who have the authority over others can dismiss out of hand updated processes like peer reviews quality control and safety regulations what good are the policy changes without an overall culture of accountability this hyatt regency walkway collapse was the epitome of these circumstances when atrium construction resumed after the initial roof collapse amidst that incident's investigation and up against a now further delayed schedule combine this with peer reviews and overall quality control seen as more of an inconvenience in the industry's cultural climate at the time the walkways have been constructed using those revised prints the design change requested by haven steel because the fabricator wanted to avoid threading the entire length of each rod one of the reasons given allegedly being that fully threaded rods of these lengths were more prone to damage in handling and construction which i personally find questionable as being the only reason it reeks of there being more to it like cost cutting or time saving in addition multiple requests by gillum himself and gce to have a resident inspector full time on site would go unapproved by crown due to additional cost through an exhaustive search by nbs poring over various records and documents though it was discovered that inspection company general testing laboratories incorporated had been brought in for a one-time inspection during a three-day period in august of 1979 specifically to inspect the bolted connections of the hangar rods but that quote the hanging walkways were inaccessible due to metal decking or difficulty of position and that the connections were not checked by a calibrated torque wrench no additional information on the walkways was found in these reports filed by general testing laboratories with this revised walkway design from the day of construction they had only minimal capacity to resist even their own weight and had virtually no capacity to resist additional loads imposed by people also important to note though was that even the original designs were later determined to be just barely capable of holding their expected loads even if the single continuous rods had been used calculations bore out that their capacity would have been just 60 percent of what's required by kansas city building code at the time the 26-week long investigative trial that took place thereafter saw gce representatives denying having ever received calls about the design changes by havens denying the conversations ever took place at all yet engineer of record jack gillam had still applied his personal stamp his seal of approval to the design revisions the implication being that in this atmosphere of such poor mismanagement of responsibility it's widely concluded that approval was given to the change inexplicably with zero review in calculation or design as an engineer record you take the full responsibility and that's what i did i sealed the drawing and that's where the buck stopped and that's where it will on every single project in 1984 civil charges were brought against daniel m duncan the project engineer jack gillam engineer of record along with the rest of the gce firm by the missouri board for architects professional engineers and land surveyors the charges being gross negligence incompetence misconduct and unprofessional conduct in their practice of engineering several engineers lost licenses and firms went bankrupt as a result of the hearings billions of dollars in legal suits insurance claims and city policy reforms also came as a result by november of 1984 duncan and gilliam had been found guilty of their previous charges and could no longer practice engineering in the states of missouri and texas both of which still went on to practice in other states though and for their part it's been said they have had difficulty living with their anguish renovations to the atrium would still include the second floor terrace but the remaining suspended third floor walkway would be removed and eventually a single much wider deck was constructed at the second floor level supported by massive columns doing away with the previous walkway designs entirely the hotel would be bought out in 2011 becoming the sheridan at crown center the brand it retains to this day the skywalk memorial plaza sits adjacent just to the northeast with its features well cared for and list of names prominent on the main memorial [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Brick Immortar

Views: 704,229

Keywords: hyatt collapse, kansas city, hyatt skywalk, hyatt regency, walkway collapse, skywalk collapse, structural failure, jack d gillum, structural engineering, civil engineering, crown center kansas city, crown center collapse, how did the hyatt regency walkway collapse, why did the hyatt regency walkway collapse

Id: jgG-gnpn0os

Length: 21min 11sec (1271 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 10 2021