With the technological developments, buildings can now be constructed in an extremely robust manner. Among the things that make the structures, which are marvels of mathematics and engineering, as durable as they are today, the share of learning from mistakes made is as much as technology.
The incident that took place at the Hyatt Regency, which was intended to become the center of attraction for Kansas City, was just an example for this. Unfortunately, hundreds of people lost their lives, but similar structures built later were not made the same mistake. Let’s take a closer look at what happened at the Hyatt Regency on July 17, 1981.
Hyatt Regency has accomplished more than expected in a short time.
The Hyatt Regency Hotel opened in 1980 in the Crown Center, which is considered one of Kansas City’s most important buildings. The purpose of the hotel was to add to the luxury setting of the Crown Center while at the same time making the complex a Kansas City attraction.
Hotel; With its revolving roof restaurant, large lobby and exhibition hall, it managed to become a popular place of high society in a short time. One of the most interesting aspects of the hotel was the four-story walkways above the lobby, which was a novelty for that time.
From the first day it opened, visitors began to attend the afternoon tea dance parties at the hotel. So many visitors and attention in such a short time was seen as a great success.
After a better-than-expected year, on July 17, 1981, a tea dance party was being held at the hotel again.
It could be called an ordinary day for both hotel officials and participants. But who knew that this ordinary day would turn into a disaster?
More than 1,600 people gathered at the hotel that day. While the dancers danced and had fun in the hotel lobby, some of the people were watching down the walkways. Unexpectedly, two of these walkways, connected to each other, collapsed and 114 people were killed and more than 200 injured.
So what was the main reason why the walkways collapsed?
As we mentioned above, the hotel lobby had elevated multi-level walkways hanging from the ceiling. The second and fourth floors of the walkways made of steel, glass and concrete were directly connected. In addition, the length of the roads was approximately 37 meters and the weight was approximately 29,000 kg.
One of the biggest reasons for the incident that took place on the evening of 17 July 1981 was that the walking path could not carry about 40-50 people on the fourth floor.
According to survivors or witnesses, a few minutes before the fourth-floor road collapsed, guests heard sounds like explosions and loud cracklings. Authorities, on the other hand, did not give enough warnings about the noises or that the walkways could not bear the weight.
The fourth floor, first to the second floor, then the two of them fell into the lobby. The rescue operation took exactly 14 hours. Fire crews had a hard time lifting tons of steel, concrete and glass walkways. Therefore, cranes and jacks were brought from various places, especially from construction companies. The teams had to deal with the water circulating due to the power outage and the activation of the hotel’s sprinkler system.
Perhaps the most crucial aspect of this event was the dismemberment of the corpses to reach the people who were under tons of weight. The dead were moved to the showroom on the ground floor of the hotel by setting up a makeshift morgue, and the hotel’s driveway and lawn began to be used as a treatment area.
At the end of 14 hours, about 30 people were pulled out of the rubble alive, but a bigger problem lay behind this incident, in which hundreds of people died.
Small change in design caused huge problems
The lawsuit filed after the incident continued for years. Authorities searched for the cause of the incident for years, and it was eventually revealed that the cause of the disaster was a design error as well as the weight capacity of the walkways.
According to the original plan, the second-floor walkway was connected directly to the ceiling by six steel suspension rods. However, the company that produced the rods suggested that part of the second floor should be connected directly to the ceiling and some to the fourth floor due to the problems that may occur during the hanging. In other words, the fourth floor would both support itself and support the second floor.
This seemingly simple change, which had a critical impact on building security, was a disaster. After the lawsuit, the license of the engineering firm that planned the walkways was revoked and the Hyatt Regency paid approximately 140 million dollars to the victims.
The Hyatt Regency Hotel started to serve again three months after the incident. The name of the hotel was changed to Sheraton Kansas City in 2011 and it continues to serve with the same design today.
Sources: mathematical.org, The Horror Report, KansasCity
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