NAME: NUR NOBI SOJIB ID: 201880040134

TITLE: The Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse Kansas City, Missouri July 17, 1981
INTRODUCTION: This paper focuses on the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse of 1981. This
collapse occurred on the evening of July 17 in Kansas City, Missouri. The walkways were
supposed to be a symbol of the modern urban metropolis that Kansas City was becoming,
however, due to engineering failures the structures fell. When the collapse occurred, many
guests were in the lobby, and hundreds ended up trapped beneath the rubble. This paper
focuses in detail on the engineering issues that led to the collapse. Researchers must call into
question the box beams, the amount of weight on the walkway, and the metal rods used to
hold up the structure. Confusion between the engineers and those building the structure was
the cause of the numerous oversights and guesses that made the walkways unsafe. There are
major responsibilities that come with designing a structure that will hold many people every
day, and the engineers of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency hotel learned that the hard way.

DESCRIPTION: When a structure collapses, it can leave those affected with feelings of shock,
grief, and anger. Citizens expect those who are experts to know how a structure is supposed to
be built, and they go to them demanding answers when it fails. This was the case on the
evening of July 17, 1981, in Kansas City, Missouri. On this night two of the walkways at the
Hyatt Regency Hotel, which had been open for only about a year, collapsed. The second and
fourth floor suspended walkways crashed on top of each other, leaving hundreds dead and
hundreds more injured. This research paper focuses on exactly why the walkways collapsed,
and what decisions could have been made to prevent it. With prestigious engineers, and a
construction company that rarely had issues, the collapse of the Hyatt Regency Hotel’s
walkways left Kansas City residents asking, “Why?” Within American History, the Hyatt Regency
walkway collapse is placed as one of the worst structural engineering failures in the United
States. The construction of the Hyatt Regency began being planned in early 1976. During this
time, Kansas City was still developing as an urban area. The construction of the Hyatt was going
to benefit the city economically by attracting tourists to the developing city. The hotel was
designed to be thirty-five stories tall, with 750 guest rooms, and a restaurant below. The hotel’s
atrium held three walkways that spanned the length of the lobby. These walkways were to be
suspended from the ceiling. Many future guests and city residents were excited about the
modern design of the new hotel. “Early schemes called for the walkways to be supported on
posts off of the concrete floor at the first level. Later, the decision was made to suspend the
walkways from the roof structure to give a light and airy feel to the atrium space As time went
on, schematics and further designs were drawn up by the engineers, Daniel Duncan and Jack
Gillum, who were responsible for designing the atrium space. It was decided by the engineers
that “at the expansion joint, the ends of the walkways, and the ends of the wide flange beams
holding up the east side of the roof structure, slotted holes were used to accommodate the
anticipated movement. This design called for embedded knife plates welded to embedded
plates at these connections. The three walkways were created with a design that was new for
the age, and Kansas City residents were eager to use them to end their small town image. The
engineering of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency was led by Jack Gillum. Gillum came highly
recommended and had a very successful reputation as an engineer. He had won awards for
engineering excellence and had worked on other Crown Center projects. All of the engineers
working for Gillum were hired with care. He always took the time to make sure that all of his
team came with good backgrounds in their field of study. The specific engineer assigned to the
Hyatt Regency project in Kansas City was Daniel Duncan. Duncan was described by Gillum as an
“exceptional engineer. Engineering and designing any structure that large numbers of people
will use is a big responsibility. The Hyatt was designed by men who had years of experience, and
it came as a surprise to many people that the collapse occurred. In the end, it was heavy
confusion and negligence that were responsible for the collapse, rather than a lack of
knowledge. Just as what comes with a career that demands special skills, responsibility must be
taken by those put in charge of important projects. The men behind the Hyatt worked very
hard, and there is no doubt that Jack Gillum’s company was selected with care when the
project began. Various documents covering the building and design process of the Hyatt’s
walkways, reveal that issues arose leading to its eventual collapse. In “Chronology and Context
of the Hyatt. Regency Collapse,” by Gregory Luth, Luth’s opinion is given on where the problems
began. He believes that the issues started when the project engineer and the senior project
engineer left the firm in 1978 .These two men were the ones that would be the most
knowledgeable in the group of people assigned to work on a project of this size. After the
project engineer and the senior project engineer left, the only team member that remained
who had significant knowledge of the specific building plans was the project manager. Luth is
not wrong to sense trouble when it is noted that those contributing significantly to the build
left. He also is able to provide a table of each significant event that the Hyatt Regency faced
from its development in early 1976 until four years after the disaster in 1985. A final issue with
construction, as indicated by the table, and brought up in the article is the atrium roof collapse
that occurred on the night of October 14, 1979. Although the hotel was not opened yet, and no
one was inside at the time of the incident, the collapse still had to be called into question. Once
the roof collapse was written off by Gillum and Duncan as a one-time malfunction, construction
proceeded on an ever more accelerated pace, and the Kansas City Hyatt opened on time.
Disaster struck on July 17, 1981 when the rushed build of the walkways caused them both to
collapse. The two walkways, which sat directly on top of each other, pancaked as they fell to
the ground. Many people on the lower walkway were trapped under large pieces of concrete,
and were unable to move until rescue crews found them. Witnesses describe hearing a “loud
metallic pop” seconds before the walkway sagged in the middle, and then dropped.7 The lobby
contained 1,500 guests who were attending a weekly held tea dance at the time of the collapse.
Hundreds were killed instantly by the falling steel and concreate. The dance was taking place on
the atrium floor, and when the walkway fell it landed on top of all the people who were
underneath it. The numerous spectators and those participating in the dance competition were
caught completely off guard by the incident. One hundred and fourteen lives came to an end at
7:05pm on Friday, July 17, 1981, and the collapse of the two walkways came as a devastating
blow to the Hyatt Corporation, Jack Gillum’s newly built firm, the practice of engineering, and
Kansas City. The second and fourth story walkways both collapsed during a 1940s style tea
dance that was being held in the Hyatt’s atrium. These tea dances were held every Friday
evening at the hotel, and usually attracted many spectators and competitors. The collapse of
the walkways was made exponentially worse by the fact that the incident occurred on a Friday
evening. Due to the number of dancers crowding the atrium floor, and all of the spectators on
the walkways, more were injured or killed when the collapse occurred. Luth’s chronology of the
collapse states that “eyewitness reports indicated that there were people on all of the bridges
at the time of the collapse. Agreeing with Luth’s research findings for his article, witness reports
given in the Seconds from Disaster documentary match his description of how the collapse
unfolded. According to survivors, “about 1,500 people had crowded into the hotel’s atrium for
the tea dance. The dance also encouraged many guests to stand on the three walkways to
watch. The Truebloods, survivors of the collapse and regulars at the tea dances, said that they
were among dozens who had come out to watch from the walkways above. The extra weight
from the multiple people standing on the walkways caused the collapse to occur when it did.
Over the course of a year the structure’s weight caused the metal making up the box beams to
bend. When the dozens of spectators stood on the walkway that evening, they had no idea that
the box beams would rip, sending them plummeting to the ground. Combined with faults in
construction, it comes as no surprise that the collapse occurred during one of these Friday night tea
dances. The walkways that were built in the atrium held up for about one year after the hotel opened.
The tea dance competition, during which the collapse occurred, began at 5:00pm on Friday evening and
was set to end at 8:00pm. Due to the high number of competitors crowding the atrium floor, and all of
the guests on the walkways, many more were hurt then if the collapse had occurred on another day. At
around 7:05pm witnesses report hearing “a loud metallic pop. The fourth floor walkway sagged in the
middle and then collapsed. The weight of the fourth floor walkway falling brought the entire structure
down with it. The only pieces of the walkway that remained were the metal rods that once connected
the fourth floor walkway to the ceiling. Those who were uninjured immediately placed numerous calls
to 911, and by 7:17pm rescuers, including fire fighters, EMS, and police began arriving at the scene. The
workers quickly began attempting to save those who needed immediate attention, setting apart those
who were already dead, and making sure those who were injured got sent to the closest hospital. The
rescue efforts continued for another nine hours and fifteen minutes. The final victim of the collapse to
be found alive, Mark Williams, was pulled out of the debris at 4:30am. 14 The large amount of rubble
that was in the atrium’s lobby made rescue operations difficult and slow, causing the night of horror to
continue until the early hours of the morning. Rescue operations lasted for almost ten hours, and
investigations lasted for months, causing the Hyatt walkway collapse to be a disaster that would stay in
the memories of Kansas City residents for many years.

Damage and fatalities: Once the rescue efforts were over, the final statistics concerning the
Hyatt’s walkway collapse were startling. Out of an estimated 1,500 people in the atrium at the
time, the collapse left 114 people dead, and about 200 more injured. In total, 21 percent of the
people present in the lobby at the time of the collapse were either killed or seriously injured in
some way. After hearing these numbers, one has to imagine that thousands of others must be
mourning the loss of a loved one or family member. Considering that Kansas City was still a
mostly rural community during the late 70s and early 80s, these numbers affected much of the
city directly. Finally, more statistics were uncovered during the investigation of the collapse. It
was known that the collapse was caused by an engineering failure, but the question for a while
was whether or not the weight of the people standing on the walkway that night caused the
failure. After watching the footage that was being shot for the evening news when the collapse
occurred, the investigators could see that there were forty people standing on the second floor
walkway, and twenty three on the fourth floor walkway. Taking into account the building
standards for the time, the weight of the sixty three total people should have not put nearly
enough strain on the structure to make it fall. After crunching the numbers, looking at the
debris from the collapse, and checking building materials; investigators now believed that the
walkway had not been built properly, and there was no one to blame except the engineers who
had been assigned to the project.

REASON: There is no doubt that the residents of Kansas City Missouri reacted with shock at
the news of the walkway collapse. City residents wanted answers right away so that they could
know what or who caused so many innocent lives to come to an end. The head engineer and
the project engineer were both convicted of gross negligence, misconduct, and unprofessional
conduct in their practice by the Missouri Board of Architects, Professional Engineers, and Land
Surveyors.17 After the collapse, numerous disagreements occurred over how the investigation.
should be carried out. City officials wanted their investigation to be a federal one, but residents
wished to hire an engineer to look at the debris and report his or her findings immediately. As
far as during the disaster, there is no evidence that a researcher can find of any fault on the
part of those who responded to the disaster. Emergency crews worked tirelessly through the
night until 5:00AM pulling trapped guests out of the large debris pile. After consulting
documents, documentaries, and books; it is clear that the engineers and designers were the
ones who were fully put to blame. Connection points between the two walkways had failed,
thus indicating that the issue was with the design of the double walkways. If one was unaware
of the way that the walkways were built, one would have no idea of the impending structural
failure that had been eminent from the beginning. City Officials wanted to conduct a federal
investigation, and send debris away to be analyzed. The Mayor of Kansas City , Richard Berkley,
wanted the investigation to be conducted by the National Bureau of Standards.19 The reports
of the findings from this investigation could take months, as the NBS was normally extremely
busy. City officials told citizens and members of the Hyatt Company not to hire another
engineer. A federal investigation was needed, and would provide the answers that were
wanted despite being slower than other options. While an experienced engineer would be able
to give his or her professional opinion, thorough analysis was needed in this situation. Officials
felt that an incident of this scale called for drastic action and severe consequences. The fact
that construction had moved forward despite so much confusion between the engineers and
the construction crew demanded an explanation. The men chosen to build the Hyatt Regency
were selected from those with nothing but the highest of recommendations, so why their
seemingly well did thought out project fail? The residents of Kansas City wanted immediate
answers about the walkway collapse. Many friends and loved ones of people in the city were
dead, and an explanation was needed. Residents wanted the impending investigation to be
quick, immediate, and efficient. They desired for another engineer to look at the wreckage, and
report as to why he or she thinks the collapse happened. According to the Journal of
Performance of Constructed Facilities, the Missouri licensing board began to discretely conduct
its own investigation after the NBS report was published.whether it had been from faulty joints
or too much weight from all of the guests, the people of Kansas City felt that they deserved an
answer. Kansas City was still a pretty small town, and every resident felt affected by what had
happened. It was normal for those who has lost a loved one to demand answers. Why had the
hotel opened on time despite the ceiling collapse? Why had the construction of the walkways
been rushed? Why numerous faults being found by investigators to exist in the construction of
the walkways? While a federal investigation could take months, Kansas City needed someone
who was working for the residents specifically. Citizens needed someone who would do all that
he or she could to find out what happened, and report immediately on his or her suspicions.
This would give the people of Kansas City the thought that justice had been served, and allow
them to heal their wounds. The actual investigation that followed the collapse ended up being a
bit of both what residents wanted, and what city officials wanted. Hyatt and the Crown Center
Redevelopment Corporation began conducting their own investigation. While city officials
allowed the NBS to conduct their federal investigation, Kansas City residents hired Wayne
Lischka, a seasoned engineer, to investigate the wreckage. Lischka reported in the Seconds
from Disaster documentary that he secretly photographed the debris of the collapse from
inside of the hotel. Hewas able to zoom in on the box beams that held up the two walkways,
and he noticed several different factors that came together to cause the collapse.
As with the majority of structural failures, the walkway collapse was investigated by
professionals in the field of engineering. The Missouri Board of Architects, Professional
Engineers, and Land Surveyors was involved, and was responsible for bringing charges against
the engineers who were involved in building the walkways. In addition to the Missouri Board,
the American Society of Civil Engineers was involved in the process as well. Members of the
National Beaureu of Standards were hired by the mayor of Kansas City, and an engineer named
Wayne Lischka was hired by the Kansas City Star. Overall, many people were involved in the
investigation. There were people from the media, engineers, and government officials working
together to determine who was responsible. The collapse of the walkways at the Hyatt Regency
hotel was a very high profile case in engineering, and many expert opinions were needed in
order to discover exactly what happened. Lischka and the men from the NBS hired to
investigate the Hyatt walkway collapse discovered that problems with engineering caused the
failure when looking at the physical scene of the accident. Wayne Lischka, when looking out
upon the scene in the lobby, noticed that the rods connecting the fourth floor walkway to the
ceiling were still intact.He also took notice of the box joints that were built to support and hold
up the walkways. Photographing the box joints, Lischka had evidence that there were certainly
some things that were constructed improperly. Nearly all of the connection points on both
walkways were deformed. Lischka observed the box beams, and noticed that they were very
different from what should have been built. He stated that if one wanted to make a walkway,
one would normally have taken the metal plates, faced them away from each other, and placed
the rod in the middle. The box beams at the Hyatt had been made with the two metal plates
facing each other, and had been welded together at the seams. This design, coupled with a
welding job that was not thorough, clearly indicated that issues in design and engineering were
fully at fault for the collapse. After discovering that the walkway collapse was due to an
engineering problem, the issue now was assigning blame to the individuals who were
responsible. As the investigation went underway, it was discovered that the second and fourth
story walkways were not built as was intended. Originally, the second floor walkway and the
fourth floor walkway were meant to hang from continuous rods that went from the lower
walkway all the way up to the ceiling. There was to be a nut on the rod under the fourth floor
walkways that supported it above the lower one below. This design would lessen the amount of
weight that was put upon the upper walkway. The weight of both walkways would be split by
the nut so that the rods underneath of it would support the second story walkway, while the
rods hanging from the ceiling would support the fourth. In addition to the tension rods, there
were changes made in the box beams that were built to hold the walkway floor to the tension
rods. It was decided by the engineers that “at the expansion joint, the ends of the walkways,
and the ends of the wide flange beams holding up the east side of the roof structure, slotted
holes would accommodate the anticipated movement. This design called for embedded knife
plates welded to embedded plates at these connections. The goal that the designers and
engineers had in mind was to give all three of the walkways a modern look. They wanted them
to look dainty and weightless, neglecting that they also had to be strong. The subsequent
changes that were made to the design of the walkways no doubt caused the collapse to be
inevitable, and many lives to be in danger for an entire year. After all of the investigating was
done, Lischka and the men from the NBS had no doubt that the walkways collapsed due to
issues in engineering and construction. All of the documents one can find show that the two
connected walkways were not built as originally designed. Both the box beams, and the steel
rods holding the walkways up were found to be responsible for the collapse. One document,
“Case Methods in Civil Engineering”, reports that the original 1 ¾ inch rod was switched out in
building for a 1 ¼ inch one, but that the need for high strength steel was left off of the
paperwork for requested building materials. It was found that had the high strength steel been
used, the walkways could have possibly held up. A second issue was weight distribution and
building code. As was stated before, the original design for the two walkways called for one
continuous rod to connect both from the bottom of the second story walkway to the atrium
ceiling. When the two walkways were built, however, two different rods were used. One rod
connecting the fourth story walkway to the ceiling, and another connecting the second story
walkway below to the fourth story walkway above. This new design had the nut underneath of
the fourth floor walkway supporting the entire structure, rather than the weight being evenly
distributed between the two levels.31 It was found that the walkway, as it was built, was not up
to the current city code, and had already reached its maximum load capacity before people
stepped onto it.

CONCLUSION: Today, the reconstructed walkway at the Hyatt Regency hotel is much safer.
The current second story walkway is supported by thick columns, rather than being hung from
the atrium ceiling. The current design of the hotel’s walkway made it stronger, safer, and better
than it had been when the hotel was constructed. There is also no longer an upper walkway,
only one on the second floor. The fact that the walkway is no longer hanging also serves a
psychological purpose. The large supportive columns give a sense of safety, allowing guests to
know that it can no longer physically fall down. The Hyatt Regency walkway collapse also
brought with it changes in engineering protocol, specifically with those involving load bearing
structures. New engineering protocol after the collapse now specified the particular individuals
who are to be responsible for keeping track of design information. It also specifies who is to be
in charge of each piece of a structure’s design. The final change that was made to engineering
protocol because of the disaster at the Hyatt, it was declared that the design of all load bearing
structures must be double checked by an experienced engineer before being cleared. The
collapse of the second and fourth floor walkways as the Hyatt Regency Hotel brought shock and
horror to the residents of Kansas City. Although disaster was inevitable due to engineering
negligence, none of the guests expected that their evening would turn into one of horror as
they strode on and below the walkways that evening. Many lives were lost due to the carless
neglect of those who were designing and building the walkway. In the end, justice was served
after the investigations and the following disciplinary trials. There is no doubt that multiple
engineering oversights led to the eventual collapse of the two walkways. When one considers
the box beams, improper welding, and frail metal rods that were used on the walkway, it comes
as no surprise that this structure failed. While the time that the collapse occurred certainly
made it worse, the engineers and construction crews are fully to blame for the incident that
occurred in 1981. Each incident that has happened throughout history brings its own horror
and panic, but the walkway collapse at the Hyatt Regency truly affected residents. The loss of
life was personal to them, because these people were their friends and family. The Hyatt
Regency walkway collapse was a lesson learned to those who practice engineering that one
must always.