How Did The Hyatt Regency Hotel Collapse

On July 17, 1981, 114 people were killed when 2 walkway bridges collapsed within the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City. Both the second and fourth story walkway crashed down when nearly 1600 people came to watch a dance competition held within the atrium. At the time of the collapse, it was the deadliest structural collapse in U.S. history, only surpassed by the south tower collapse twenty years later during 9/11. This final destruction of The Hyatt Regency Kansas City was the worst in a string of smaller scale setbacks and delays throughout the Hotel’s contraction. In 1979, while building the atrium’s roof, 2,700 square feet of the ceiling crashed down due to a poor connection failure at its northern end. The hotel eventually opened in July of 1980, and had only been in operation for year when the devastating collapse occurred. On the evening of the event, 1,600 people either spectated or participated in a dance competition. To easier see the atrium floor below with all of the dancers, people stood on the walkways
Not only did this flood the lobby, but increased the danger for the survivors as many were now near the point of drowning. In a typical situation, the water could have been shut down by the public service, but of course the Hyatt Regency connected to private water tanks, and could therefore not be shut off. This caused Mark Williams, the final survivor rescued from the crash, to nearly drown, after spending nine and a half hours trapped with both of his legs pull rout of their sockets. Only after Kansas City’s fire chief noticed that the lobby doors were clogging drainage and ordered a bull dozer to break through the doors was Mark Williams saved. Finally, concrete dust paired with the lack of power lowered visibility causing more panic and exponentially increasing the difficulty of locating