Hyatt Regency Falls

Few engineering disasters are as infamous as the collapse of two walkways within the Hyatt Regency Kansas City Hotel on July 17th, 1981. Because of a plethora of ethical violations and poor planning, over one-hundred people lost their lives, and another two-hundred were severely injured as the walkway was overloaded and crumbled under the addition of a large live load. At the time, this was the worst structural engineering failure in US history. A thorough investigation revealed fatal flaws in the design of the walkway which indicated it could not hold such a heavy load. However, it was discovered that the bridge may have prevailed had it not been for carelessness and unethical shortcuts on the part of the engineer in charge of the project.

The construction of the project was initially placed in the hands of the fabricator, Haven Steel Company, as well as the engineering design team, G.C.E. International, Inc., a professional engineering firm (Luth, 2000). A major communication error was evident between the two firms, as neither interacted properly and design was disputed. The fabricator decided that the design of the hangar rods should be altered to prevent damage during construction, and altered plans to the new fatal flaw (Banset and Parsons, 1989). The main error in the construction of this project originated from hanger rod connections, which erroneously placed the weight of multiple walkways under the support of a single set of bolt connections, which placed too much strain on a single level of the walkway. This new design was approved by senior engineers, allowing the construction of the new plans to commence, and causing the

The bridges would span the length of the atrium within the Hyatt Regency, providing an efficient walkway across the building on the second floor and on the fourth floor (a walkway for the third floor was also installed, but it was not attached to the same support cables as the second and fourth-floor walkways, so it was not involved in the accident because it was not supporting a massive amount of extra weight). The walkway was designed so that each walkway was suspended by several 32-mm diameter tension rods made from steel (Khudeira, 2011). These cables were attached to the platforms via a series of box girder, attached by bolts. Since the second-floor walkway was to be placed directly beneath the fourth-floor walkway, the two platforms were designed to rely on support from the same tension rods. (after the collapse, investigators decided that this original design was also unacceptable, since it only allowed for support of sixty percent of minimum legal load in Kansas). At some point during the design of the project, the manufacturer of the rods requested that, instead of on continuous rod to hold the two platforms, two separate rods be used (Banset and Parson, 1989). The manufacturer foreshadowed that the rods would be easily damaged in construction, so it would be easier to use separate rods to make installation easier. This was a major error, since now the fourth-floor beams were