Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse - Disaster

Disaster

On the evening of July 17, 1981, approximately 1,600 people gathered in the atrium to participate in and watch a dance competition. Many people stood on the two connected walkways. At 7:05 PM, 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 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. The connection failed and the fourth floor walkway collapsed onto the second floor and both walkways then fell to the lobby floor below, resulting in 111 immediate deaths and 216 injuries. Three additional victims died after being evacuated to hospitals making the total number of deaths 114 people.

The rescue operation lasted fourteen hours and was performed by many emergency personnel, including crews from 34 fire trucks and EMS units, doctors from five local hospitals and construction crews with heavy equipment. 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 taxicab driveway 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 were given morphine. Volunteers arrived from every quarter, including construction companies and building supply stores, bringing "hydraulic jacks, acetylene torches, compressors and generators".

One of the great challenges of the rescue operation was that the hotel's water pipes had been severed by falling debris, flooding the lobby and putting trapped survivors at great risk of drowning. As the pipes were connected to water tanks, not a public source, the flow could not be shut. Mark Williams, the last person rescued alive from the rubble, spent more than nine and a half hours pinned underneath the lower skywalk, both legs pulled out of their sockets. Williams nearly drowned before Kansas City's fire chief realized that the hotel's front doors were trapping the water in the lobby. On his orders, a bulldozer was sent to break through the doors, which allowed the water to pour out of the lobby and thus eliminated the danger to the trapped. Additionally, the lobby was filled with concrete dust, and visibility was poor as the emergency workers had cut the power to prevent fires.

Twenty-nine people were rescued from the rubble.