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The Hyatt Regency Skywalk Disaster · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:12
Speaker 3: So I'm Josh and there's Chuck and it's just the
0:15
Speaker 3: two of us and we're gonna do just fine.
0:18
Speaker 2: I have a good feeling because this is stuff you
0:21
Speaker 2: should know. We've been at it for decades now.
0:25
Speaker 4: Not decades, well, in different decades.
0:28
Speaker 2: Right, that's how people get you. Yeah, they say stuff
0:32
Speaker 2: like that.
0:33
Speaker 1: That's right, Big CoA for this one. It is about
0:36
Speaker 1: a very gruesome tragedy that we're gonna detail, and we're
0:41
Speaker 1: gonna talk about a little bit of the gruesome stuff,
0:44
Speaker 1: but not get to you know, detailed, because it was
0:49
Speaker 1: a terrible tragedy. But we just want to alert listeners,
0:52
Speaker 1: especially our younger listeners, that some of this stuff is
0:55
Speaker 1: pretty terrible. That is the events of the High Regency
0:59
Speaker 1: Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri in nineteen eighty one.
1:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that was just one year after that hotel opened.
1:07
Speaker 4: Right, that's right.
1:09
Speaker 1: This is the High Regency, a forty five story, seven
1:14
Speaker 1: hundred room hotel that opened in July of nineteen eighty
1:17
Speaker 1: It was a part of a big suite a complex
1:21
Speaker 1: called the Crown Center. Huh Yeah, the Crown Center complex,
1:26
Speaker 1: and it had retail, had housing, all kinds of stuff
1:29
Speaker 1: owned by the Hallmark Corporation.
1:31
Speaker 3: That's where the Crown came from. Because remember if you
1:34
Speaker 3: turn a Hallmark card over sometimes it says Crown.
1:37
Speaker 4: Well then their logo is a Crown.
1:39
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that too. But this hotel, Chuck.
1:42
Speaker 3: If you go back and look at pictures of it
1:44
Speaker 3: pre disaster, it was magnificent. Like if you looked up,
1:48
Speaker 3: you would see that there was a high hall a
1:51
Speaker 3: walkway right over your head. And that was actually one
1:55
Speaker 3: of three that were kind of like the signature design
1:58
Speaker 3: of this atrium at the High Regions see Kansas City.
2:01
Speaker 4: That's right.
2:02
Speaker 1: And like we said, this thing had been open for
2:05
Speaker 1: about a year when the collapse tragedy occurred. During one
2:10
Speaker 1: of their they were hosting these weekend tea dances, which
2:14
Speaker 1: apparently were very popular in town. It was sort of
2:17
Speaker 1: an antiquated old school thing that they did, but the
2:20
Speaker 1: people of Kansas City ate it up and they were
2:22
Speaker 1: just growing bigger and bigger with every weekend. And on
2:25
Speaker 1: this particular weekend they had, you know, as they did,
2:29
Speaker 1: they had a live band playing, and I saw anywhere
2:33
Speaker 1: from I saw a thousand people in different places. This
2:37
Speaker 1: is one of those things where like every time you
2:41
Speaker 1: see a different video, you'll get different numbers and different things,
2:45
Speaker 1: and these can be a little frustrating sometimes. But at
2:48
Speaker 1: least a thousand, yeah, and maybe as many as two
2:50
Speaker 1: thousand people there hanging out, partying and dancing in the lobby.
2:55
Speaker 2: Yeah.
2:55
Speaker 3: I mean, if you see there's footage of it, because
2:58
Speaker 3: I think one of the local TV stations was doing
3:01
Speaker 3: a human interest piece on how popular these this dance
3:04
Speaker 3: had becomes Friday night dance, and that place was packed
3:09
Speaker 3: with people, not just in the atrium on the floor,
3:11
Speaker 3: but also up at the terrace restaurant and on those
3:14
Speaker 3: three walkways that span the entire length of the atrium
3:18
Speaker 3: from one side to another on the second, third, and
3:22
Speaker 3: fourth floors. So there was a ton of people. And
3:24
Speaker 3: the number I most commonly saw was fifteen hundred, so
3:28
Speaker 3: I guess everybody else split the difference.
3:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's crowded, it's packed full of people. A
3:34
Speaker 1: little after seven o'clock, the band comes back from a
3:37
Speaker 1: break to play their final big number of the dance contest.
3:41
Speaker 1: And you know, when you look at interviews with people
3:46
Speaker 1: from the time, they all describe hearing three loud popping
3:50
Speaker 1: noises or snapping noises. They sounded like, you know, some
3:54
Speaker 1: people said they sounded like gunshots going off.
3:58
Speaker 4: In very quick success.
4:01
Speaker 1: Floors the walkways of on floors four and two collapsed
4:05
Speaker 1: fully these cement and we're going to go over you
4:07
Speaker 1: know why this happened and what these are all were
4:09
Speaker 1: made of, but you know, steel and concrete, and it
4:12
Speaker 1: was super heavy and collapsed on hundreds and hundreds of
4:15
Speaker 1: people below.
4:16
Speaker 3: Yes, so these each one I think, weighed something like
4:20
Speaker 3: thirty two tons, each of these walkways did, and one
4:25
Speaker 3: was above the number. The fourth story walkway was directly
4:30
Speaker 3: above the second story walkway, so much so that the
4:32
Speaker 3: second story walkway was dangling from the fourth story walkway.
4:35
Speaker 3: So in the fourth story walkway gave it came down,
4:38
Speaker 3: the second story hit the ground first, the fourth story
4:42
Speaker 3: walkway hit the second floor. So there was like a
4:45
Speaker 3: stratum or a strata of layers of destruction of debris
4:51
Speaker 3: and people were pin chuck beneath two thirty two ton
4:54
Speaker 3: walkways that were in four segments. So each segment wasn't
4:58
Speaker 3: thirty two tons, but it was enough to really do
5:00
Speaker 3: a lot of damage, like immediately, like apparently it happened
5:05
Speaker 3: in the blink of an eye basically, and I mean,
5:07
Speaker 3: like it's really tough to get across, like how much
5:10
Speaker 3: of a tragedy this was. Like there were couples dancing
5:13
Speaker 3: that were killed simultaneously by this stuff, So that means
5:17
Speaker 3: that there were people in Kansas City who lost both
5:20
Speaker 3: parents all at once, or lost one parent, or lost
5:23
Speaker 3: a friend. Like a lot of people were impacted by
5:27
Speaker 3: this tragedy and it just happened in just the blink
5:29
Speaker 3: of an eye.
5:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it ripped from the ceiling and they
5:33
Speaker 1: just collapsed. The eyewitness accounts if you see any of
5:38
Speaker 1: the either contemporaneous footage or they've done interviews with people
5:42
Speaker 1: since and like follow up documentaries and such, it's just awful.
5:47
Speaker 1: Everyone talked about how in like the some people set
5:51
Speaker 1: up to like five seconds afterward, it was just complete silence,
5:55
Speaker 1: like obviously the every the band had stopped and there
5:59
Speaker 1: was just a brief moment of nothingness and then all
6:03
Speaker 1: of a sudden screaming, wailing people in some of the
6:09
Speaker 1: most horrible pain and circumstances that you can imagine, which
6:14
Speaker 1: again we're going to get to a little bit, But
6:17
Speaker 1: it's if you really want to dive into the down
6:20
Speaker 1: the rabbit hole of what all happened to these folks,
6:22
Speaker 1: you can you can look this stuff up online.
6:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's there's actually a lot of really well written
6:28
Speaker 3: articles on it from out of Kansas City.
6:31
Speaker 2: But the the in.
6:33
Speaker 3: That chaos that ensued almost immediately, there were a lot
6:38
Speaker 3: of people pinned underneath. There were people who've been injured
6:40
Speaker 3: by debris, and then there were other people who were
6:45
Speaker 3: nearby and were just dazed and weren't really injured at all,
6:49
Speaker 3: but just couldn't believe what they'd just seen. And then
6:51
Speaker 3: there was a small kind of cadre people among the
6:55
Speaker 3: witnesses who just kind of immediately sprang into action. And
6:59
Speaker 3: we you see footage of the immedia affrom at. You
7:01
Speaker 3: see men in suits and women in dresses like trying
7:04
Speaker 3: to pick through the debris and get people out of
7:06
Speaker 3: there as fast as they can. And all of this
7:09
Speaker 3: just started even before the fire department and police department
7:12
Speaker 3: showed up to start to take charge of things. People
7:15
Speaker 3: just immediately some people had an impulse to go in
7:18
Speaker 3: there and help.
7:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was and you know, we should mention that
7:23
Speaker 1: the fire Department of the Cops. Everyone got there really
7:26
Speaker 1: really fast. Yeah, apparently they were also close to hospitals.
7:31
Speaker 1: I think there were three, it was called Hospital Hill,
7:34
Speaker 1: three hospitals that were really nearby that started taking people on.
7:39
Speaker 1: They were working, you know, basically into the night and
7:42
Speaker 1: into the next morning, with a final death toll of
7:46
Speaker 1: one hundred and fourteen people perished and more than two
7:51
Speaker 1: hundred were injured. And I think they still listed as
7:55
Speaker 1: an American history, at least the largest structural disaster in history.
8:00
Speaker 3: That it was until September eleventh, the largest in American history,
8:05
Speaker 3: and then it became the largest accidental structural disaster in
8:10
Speaker 3: American history. So, yeah, one hundred and fourteen people dead,
8:15
Speaker 3: one hundred and eleven like basically dead on the scene.
8:17
Speaker 3: Three more people who were gravely injured died later on
8:21
Speaker 3: from their injuries. And the people who survived there were
8:26
Speaker 3: incredibly survivors who were pinned under these walkways as slabs
8:31
Speaker 3: of concrete, but they were in terrible shape. And there
8:35
Speaker 3: was a man named Mark Williams who was a survivor,
8:37
Speaker 3: and he's if you read about this or watch videos
8:40
Speaker 3: on it, he's very prominent. He's a very outspoken type
8:43
Speaker 3: of guy, and he talked a lot about being rescued.
8:46
Speaker 3: He was the last person rescued all the way at
8:49
Speaker 3: four thirty am, but he was at the bar that
8:54
Speaker 3: was directly beneath the walkways and realized what was happening
8:58
Speaker 3: and started to run. Those walkways fell so fast that
9:02
Speaker 3: apparently he didn't even get his first stride, but his
9:05
Speaker 3: legs were astride and so he was smushed down into
9:09
Speaker 3: a split and that's where he stayed until four thirty am.
9:13
Speaker 3: And this happened at like seven pm, and he survived.
9:17
Speaker 3: He managed to live. And there were other stories like
9:20
Speaker 3: that too, a little eleven year old boy who was
9:22
Speaker 3: pulled out of the rubble. A few people I think
9:25
Speaker 3: six or seven or something like that were did manage
9:28
Speaker 3: to survive, but the vast majority of people who were
9:31
Speaker 3: on or under the walkways when they collapsed died.
9:36
Speaker 4: Yeah, there was.
9:39
Speaker 1: There were situations where they had to amputate arms and
9:44
Speaker 1: legs on the spot just to get people out of
9:47
Speaker 1: there and give them a chance at living, and they
9:50
Speaker 1: did this kind of thing with chainsaws. There was one
9:54
Speaker 1: and this is really gruesome, but there was one horrific
9:57
Speaker 1: story of a guy that was, you know, trying to
10:00
Speaker 1: pull someone out and the guy's arm just comes off
10:03
Speaker 1: and he's holding it, and the officer on charge said,
10:06
Speaker 1: the guy just set it down and left. And you know,
10:11
Speaker 1: we'll get to the PTSD that obviously followed, but a
10:14
Speaker 1: lot of these first responders, you know, there were some
10:19
Speaker 1: suicides later on. There was alcoholism and drug use and
10:24
Speaker 1: lives and shambles because they didn't have stuff, like you know,
10:28
Speaker 1: they went to work the next day. They weren't like,
10:30
Speaker 1: all right, we need to get you into counseling quick
10:32
Speaker 1: like and start taking care of you. And that's one
10:34
Speaker 1: of the big changes that came out of this was
10:37
Speaker 1: PTSD therapy for emergency responders.
10:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it had an impact on the entire city.
10:43
Speaker 3: I mean, people who weren't there, people who didn't even
10:46
Speaker 3: know people who were there, were still impacted for years
10:49
Speaker 3: and years. It just had it just left a blotch
10:51
Speaker 3: on the city. It was just such a horrible tragedy.
10:55
Speaker 3: And there are a couple of other stories that stuck
10:57
Speaker 3: out to me of the people who died. One that
11:00
Speaker 3: did was a woman named Lynn Vander Hayden who's twenty two,
11:06
Speaker 3: and she would just happen to be walking through the
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Speaker 3: lobby on her way to the Revolving restaurant on the
11:12
Speaker 3: top of the hotel. She was just passing through and
11:15
Speaker 3: she died. And then another one that stood out as
11:18
Speaker 3: a man named Oscar Grimm, who pushed his wife Joan
11:22
Speaker 3: out of the way and she lived and he died.
11:25
Speaker 3: But he managed to act that quickly that he was
11:30
Speaker 3: able to save his wife's life. His last act on
11:33
Speaker 3: earth was to save his wife's life, which I think
11:36
Speaker 3: is remarkable.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's amazing. So they turn the you know, it
11:42
Speaker 1: basically becomes a war zone. Immediately, they turn one room
11:47
Speaker 1: into a triage center. They turned one room into a
11:50
Speaker 1: temporary morgue. They're trying to get people out of there
11:53
Speaker 1: and into the parking lot. It is summertime, so was
11:57
Speaker 1: still daylight during the initial efforts, but as darkness fell,
12:03
Speaker 1: the power had been blown. So then it becomes dark
12:06
Speaker 1: overnight when they're still you know, sort of digging through there,
12:09
Speaker 1: either trying to get dead bodies out or trying to
12:13
Speaker 1: get people out that are still just wailing in the darkness.
12:16
Speaker 1: And not only that, but the sprinkler system had torn
12:20
Speaker 1: apart and a water pipe burst and for about fifty
12:25
Speaker 1: minutes this. You know, parts of this room were filling
12:28
Speaker 1: up with water, and you know, let's say you're trapped
12:31
Speaker 1: in a very small, confined space is filling up with water.
12:35
Speaker 1: There were survivors that said they thought they were going
12:37
Speaker 1: to drown all of a sudden.
12:39
Speaker 3: I didn't see that anyone definitively did drown, but the
12:42
Speaker 3: people on the bottom of the pile were definitely in
12:44
Speaker 3: danger of it for sure. It took forty five minutes,
12:48
Speaker 3: I think, to finally turn the water off forty eight
12:51
Speaker 3: forty eight and then but there was a quick thinking
12:54
Speaker 3: fire chief. I don't know if it was a deputy
12:56
Speaker 3: chief I saw. I didn't get their name, and there
12:58
Speaker 3: were a bunch of deputy chiefs there, but they were like,
13:02
Speaker 3: we need to bulldoze these front doors because they're acting
13:04
Speaker 3: as a damn. So they bulldozed the doors and let
13:07
Speaker 3: the water out and kind of saved the day. But
13:10
Speaker 3: that was I mean, imagine being pinned beneath this rubble
13:12
Speaker 3: and now you might accidentally drown.
13:15
Speaker 2: Like what a day.
13:17
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was. It was a tragedy that still looms large.
13:22
Speaker 1: And maybe we should take a break and talk about
13:25
Speaker 1: what happened and why this happened right after this.
13:53
Speaker 3: So, Chuck, there were so many people and very fortunately,
13:57
Speaker 3: like you said, they were near a few hospitals, but
14:00
Speaker 3: they ended up requiring seventeen emergency rooms for this.
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Speaker 4: Yeah.
14:05
Speaker 1: They construction companies came in and were donating forklifts, they
14:09
Speaker 1: were donating cranes, people were donating their own personal equipment.
14:14
Speaker 1: Everybody basically came and chipped in. You mentioned those front
14:19
Speaker 1: doors being knocked down. They ended up knocking holes through
14:22
Speaker 1: the entire front of the hotel, not holes like there
14:26
Speaker 1: was no front of the hotel because they had to
14:28
Speaker 1: get a crane in there eventually. Because all the equipment
14:32
Speaker 1: that they were trying to get forklifts, I mean, you
14:34
Speaker 1: name it, to try and lift these concrete slabs, it
14:38
Speaker 1: was just pushing everything out of the way. So they
14:40
Speaker 1: ended up having to bring in, like, you know, the
14:42
Speaker 1: most heavy duty construction crane you can imagine to pull
14:45
Speaker 1: these things up eventually.
14:47
Speaker 3: So I saw, Chuck that like there were all these
14:50
Speaker 3: amazing acts of people of generosity, of heroism, and just
14:54
Speaker 3: people coming together. And I also saw from some of
14:57
Speaker 3: the people who were involved that within our of the tragedy,
15:02
Speaker 3: the mood did like a one to eighty, and people
15:05
Speaker 3: started to want to know what happened, what had gone wrong,
15:09
Speaker 3: and who was to blame, because it was very clearly
15:11
Speaker 3: something had gone terribly wrong with the structure of those skywalks,
15:15
Speaker 3: and people wanted to know why because again, this was
15:19
Speaker 3: just such a catastrophic loss of life it was almost incomprehensible.
15:23
Speaker 3: But it started to settle in that it had happened
15:25
Speaker 3: and that somebody somewhere was to blame and people wanted
15:29
Speaker 3: to know.
15:31
Speaker 4: Yeah.
15:31
Speaker 1: So what they eventually figured out, and this was after
15:35
Speaker 1: some pretty amazing investigation by the National Bureau of Standards
15:41
Speaker 1: which is now the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
15:45
Speaker 1: They were I mean they did they X rayed material,
15:48
Speaker 1: they did metallurgical examinations of steel, they did, you know,
15:53
Speaker 1: physics tests, They did everything you could imagine to figure
15:57
Speaker 1: out what went wrong and what they landed on. It
16:00
Speaker 1: turns out they didn't really need to do any of
16:03
Speaker 1: those tests. It was a design change that was, as
16:07
Speaker 1: it turns out, basically rubber stamped. The original design of
16:11
Speaker 1: these walkways that were again two and four were suspended
16:15
Speaker 1: above each other, and floor number three, which didn't collapse,
16:18
Speaker 1: was just offset from that one kind of over the
16:20
Speaker 1: center of the atrium. But the original design called for
16:24
Speaker 1: these skywalks to be held together with one, you know,
16:27
Speaker 1: group of continuous steel rods that went through both floors,
16:32
Speaker 1: and all the sets of these hollow beams threaded with nuts.
16:37
Speaker 1: But this was like, you know, forty five feet or
16:40
Speaker 1: so of threaded rod. And they said, you know what,
16:43
Speaker 1: threading wears out, and if you thread a nut forty
16:46
Speaker 1: five feet, that's a long way, and eventually by the
16:49
Speaker 1: time you get to where you want to go that
16:50
Speaker 1: things are not going to be as strong as it
16:52
Speaker 1: needs to be. So they changed the design to basically
16:56
Speaker 1: hang the second floor from the first the fourth floor
17:00
Speaker 1: using two sets of rods instead of one continuous set,
17:03
Speaker 1: which basically double the weight of what everything was hanging
17:08
Speaker 1: on on floor four. There's a great YouTube video. I
17:13
Speaker 1: believe the guy is English. His name is Tom Scott,
17:16
Speaker 1: but he got an engineer, this guy named Grady from
17:20
Speaker 1: Practical Engineers, who put it like this. Imagine a long
17:24
Speaker 1: rope that two friends are hanging on. One person's hanging
17:27
Speaker 1: above the other. That's fine. Then imagine that same rope
17:32
Speaker 1: with the same two people hanging but in this case,
17:35
Speaker 1: the second person is hanging from the other person's ankles,
17:38
Speaker 1: so the total weight is the same, but the stress
17:42
Speaker 1: on that first person or in this case, that first
17:45
Speaker 1: top fourth floor is different.
17:47
Speaker 2: Yeah.
17:47
Speaker 3: I saw a guy named Bill Quip Klapman who said
17:51
Speaker 3: flagpole instead of rope. So I think that kind of
17:55
Speaker 3: demonstrates Chuck that because it's such an easy analogy that
18:00
Speaker 3: you could have looked at these designs and I mean
18:02
Speaker 3: you specifically and me and been like, are you sure
18:05
Speaker 3: this is the same as what you guys originally had,
18:08
Speaker 3: Like as far as the math goes, it was, I
18:11
Speaker 3: wouldn't have So it was so radically different, But at
18:16
Speaker 3: the same time, it seemed like, yeah, it's a no brainer.
18:19
Speaker 3: Of course that's what you're gonna do, because not only
18:21
Speaker 3: are those could those threads wear out? Like how you're
18:25
Speaker 3: gonna have to put the entire skywalk on each of
18:30
Speaker 3: those six threads, those six hanging rods threaded hanging rods,
18:35
Speaker 3: Like you're gonna have to slide them down, and of
18:37
Speaker 3: course you're gonna damage some of those threads and then
18:40
Speaker 3: they're totally useless. You won't be able to screw those
18:42
Speaker 3: nuts all the way up to the bottom of the
18:44
Speaker 3: skywalk any longer. So what you're gonna do? You just
18:47
Speaker 3: cut it in half. It makes total sense. It's still
18:50
Speaker 3: the same general design. The two skywalks are hanging from
18:53
Speaker 3: the ceiling, but like you said, now, the second floor
18:56
Speaker 3: skywalk is hanging from the fourth floor skywalk. That was
19:01
Speaker 3: a catastrophic mistake because the skywalks themselves were in no way,
19:06
Speaker 3: shape or form designed to hold up their own weight,
19:10
Speaker 3: and they were attached on either end to basically portals
19:14
Speaker 3: that led to the hallways that continued on the fourth,
19:17
Speaker 3: second and third floor on either side. Those connections to
19:20
Speaker 3: those portals were in no way, shape or form designed
19:23
Speaker 3: to hold the walkway up. So I think I said.
19:27
Speaker 3: They spanned the entire length of the atrium, which is
19:30
Speaker 3: one hundred and twenty feet, So these were one hundred
19:32
Speaker 3: and twenty feet long skywalks, and they had brass handrails
19:39
Speaker 3: at waist high, and then between that and the skywalk
19:42
Speaker 3: was class It was super cool looking, super late seventies
19:45
Speaker 3: early eighties design.
19:46
Speaker 2: Right.
19:47
Speaker 3: They were attached to the end hallways on either side,
19:52
Speaker 3: so they were basically like the hallways were just suddenly
19:55
Speaker 3: stripped of everything around them except for the part you
19:57
Speaker 3: walked on, and that's what crossed to the tre It's
20:00
Speaker 3: pretty cool. And they were attached to the hallways that
20:03
Speaker 3: continued on either side through portals, and the actual span
20:10
Speaker 3: itself was held aloft by three box beams that were
20:14
Speaker 3: perpendicular to the length of the walkways themselves. Right, So
20:19
Speaker 3: you had basically it looked like a kid swing, but
20:23
Speaker 3: three of them, and then you had the walkway spanning
20:26
Speaker 3: those three things. Does that make sense?
20:29
Speaker 4: I think so.
20:29
Speaker 3: So the walkway was held up by those three box
20:34
Speaker 3: beams that were held aloft each by two hanging rods,
20:39
Speaker 3: and it just it just couldn't do it. What's surprising
20:43
Speaker 3: to me is that it lasted a full year after
20:46
Speaker 3: it opened.
20:47
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, I mean, I guess we could go
20:50
Speaker 1: over the load bearing here. That seems to be a
20:54
Speaker 1: pretty good place for it. The NBS, like I said,
20:57
Speaker 1: he was doing the investigating. They you know, they did testing.
21:02
Speaker 1: They built their own version of this stuff, and they
21:04
Speaker 1: went and found that the load bearing capacity for just
21:09
Speaker 1: one individual connection was eighty one killo newtons, which I've
21:15
Speaker 1: never heard of before.
21:16
Speaker 3: To clear things up, chuck, a kill a newton is
21:18
Speaker 3: equal to one kilogram meter per second squared, So I'm.
21:23
Speaker 1: Sure that clears it up for everybody. Right, And that's
21:26
Speaker 1: just the you know, that's called the dead low. That's
21:28
Speaker 1: the way to the structure itself. If you have people
21:32
Speaker 1: on it, obviously it's going to be a lot different.
21:35
Speaker 1: And there were a lot of people on this. They
21:36
Speaker 1: were up there having a good time and dancing and partying.
21:40
Speaker 1: They said that would add another eleven killo newtons, So
21:45
Speaker 1: eventually you get to a total you know, by the
21:48
Speaker 1: time it collapsed, a total weight of ninety five killer newtons,
21:51
Speaker 1: which was fourteen more than it was even supposed to
21:55
Speaker 1: hold to begin with.
21:56
Speaker 3: Right, that's just like, that's how it was in reality.
22:00
Speaker 3: The thing that makes it even worse to me is
22:02
Speaker 3: that that doesn't meet code at all. Like code is
22:06
Speaker 3: that you would have to basically double that amount of
22:09
Speaker 3: load bearing capacity to have passed inspection. And yet these
22:14
Speaker 3: things passed inspection.
22:16
Speaker 4: Oh at the time it was double yes.
22:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that wasn't a change. Like this thing passed
22:20
Speaker 3: inspection despite the code requiring it to be able to
22:26
Speaker 3: support one hundred and eighty one killer newtons. Like you said,
22:29
Speaker 3: they were able to support eighty one killer newtons. So
22:33
Speaker 3: it was a terrible design. And the only explanation was
22:38
Speaker 3: that the actual explanation that when they changed that design
22:42
Speaker 3: from the singular rods, which is two guys hanging separately
22:45
Speaker 3: on a fire pole or a rope rather than hanging
22:48
Speaker 3: on their ankles, when they changed it, no one did
22:52
Speaker 3: the calculations to see if it would hold up. And
22:55
Speaker 3: that is exactly what happened.
22:57
Speaker 4: Yeah, they you know, they did.
22:59
Speaker 1: Of course, something like this happens, you're gonna inspect, like
23:02
Speaker 1: the welding, you're gonna inspect the steel.
23:05
Speaker 4: I know.
23:05
Speaker 1: They subpoened the actual steel manufacturer and the welding company
23:10
Speaker 1: and the GC and like basically everybody involved. And what
23:15
Speaker 1: they found was this thing basically like the welds would
23:19
Speaker 1: eventually rip. They had these two sort of sea bracket
23:23
Speaker 1: beams that they welded together to form one hollow, squared beam,
23:28
Speaker 1: and the rods ran through the middle of these and
23:29
Speaker 1: those did split, and the bolts basically pulled. You can
23:33
Speaker 1: see pictures where it just pulled right up through the
23:36
Speaker 1: center of them. But they said that this would have
23:38
Speaker 1: happened anyway even if it was like a solid steel
23:41
Speaker 1: beam and not too welded together.
23:43
Speaker 4: It wasn't because the welds.
23:44
Speaker 1: It wasn't because of anything basically other than the fact
23:48
Speaker 1: that this design change made it almost inevitable.
23:51
Speaker 3: So this design change was done by the steel fabricator
23:56
Speaker 3: on what are called shop drawings, and shop drawings are
23:58
Speaker 3: basically like a close up explanation of exactly how you're
24:02
Speaker 3: supposed to manufacture what the engineer or the architect wants right,
24:06
Speaker 3: And the steel fabricator says that they called the architect
24:12
Speaker 3: in charge, a guy named Daniel Duncan, and got his
24:15
Speaker 3: approval over the phone to change the rods from one
24:20
Speaker 3: single rod to two rods split in half.
24:23
Speaker 2: And that was it.
24:26
Speaker 3: There was no no one on the steel fabricator side
24:29
Speaker 3: did the calculations, and yet they stamped their approval on it.
24:33
Speaker 3: Dan Duncan didn't do the calculations, and yet he stamped
24:37
Speaker 3: his approval on it. And then a guy named Jack Gillham,
24:40
Speaker 3: who was the art of the engineer of record who
24:42
Speaker 3: Dan Duncan worked for and was in charge of this project,
24:46
Speaker 3: he didn't do the calculations and he stamped a steal
24:48
Speaker 3: of approval on that change as well. So it made
24:51
Speaker 3: it through. It made it through the process. That it's
24:53
Speaker 3: supposed to go through. And when you're sitting there building this,
24:56
Speaker 3: or when you're sitting there putting all this together and
24:59
Speaker 3: you're looking at this and it's got all three stamps
25:02
Speaker 3: that it's supposed to have, you're pretty sure that it's
25:05
Speaker 3: the way it's supposed to be. People don't stop and
25:08
Speaker 3: question that kind of thing, or at least they didn't
25:10
Speaker 3: during this construction phase.
25:12
Speaker 4: Yeah.
25:13
Speaker 1: I think that's so important to remember, because I think
25:15
Speaker 1: people stop all the time and say things aren't safe
25:19
Speaker 1: and that we should revisit stuff. Yeah, but they didn't
25:22
Speaker 1: hear there was even apparently, you know, in interviews after
25:26
Speaker 1: the fact, there were crew from the build site that
25:29
Speaker 1: we're saying like they saw these beams sort of stressing
25:32
Speaker 1: and bending a little bit when they were putting this
25:34
Speaker 1: thing together. There was a collapse earlier, a huge section
25:39
Speaker 1: of the roof collapse on this building in the middle
25:42
Speaker 1: of the night while they were building it. So this
25:45
Speaker 1: was a project that already had sort of one near
25:48
Speaker 1: tragedy averted on its hands, and it was just sort
25:52
Speaker 1: of pushed through and no one spoke up. And of
25:56
Speaker 1: course I'm not blaming the builder who saw the steel,
26:00
Speaker 1: but like, you know, everyone should be able to stand
26:04
Speaker 1: up and say and not just assume that someone else
26:08
Speaker 1: knows what they're doing when it comes to a project
26:10
Speaker 1: like this.
26:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's essential, and I think that this
26:15
Speaker 3: disaster actually kind of helped change that too. That was
26:17
Speaker 3: one of the things that did change. So I'd say, Chuck,
26:20
Speaker 3: we take a break and come back and talk about
26:21
Speaker 3: some of the fallout from this.
26:23
Speaker 4: All right, let's do it.
26:50
Speaker 1: So before we broke, you mentioned a guy named Jack Gillham,
26:53
Speaker 1: who was the engineer in charge of the project.
26:56
Speaker 4: Gillham would go on to be a public speaker.
27:00
Speaker 1: He later went on to say, you know that the
27:02
Speaker 1: problem this is a quote was so obvious that a
27:04
Speaker 1: first year engineering student could have figured it out too.
27:10
Speaker 4: Little, too late.
27:10
Speaker 1: Obviously, there was a tribunal form by the Missouri Board
27:14
Speaker 1: of Professional Engineers in nineteen eighty four in the years
27:17
Speaker 1: following that ruled it they were grossly negligent. The phone
27:23
Speaker 1: approval was obviously grossly negligent, and there was quote a
27:28
Speaker 1: conscious indifference to professional duty.
27:31
Speaker 4: So how does that happen?
27:35
Speaker 1: It was a time where there was a lot of
27:38
Speaker 1: production and construction being rushed through, not just there but
27:42
Speaker 1: all over the place the late seventies in the early eighties,
27:46
Speaker 1: it just seems like there were a lot of fast
27:48
Speaker 1: track projects. There wasn't as much oversight, there weren't as
27:52
Speaker 1: many rules in place, and there was a lot of
27:56
Speaker 1: stuff ed. Who helped us out with this pointed out
27:58
Speaker 1: the Kemper Arena roof collapse in seventy nine. The Hartford
28:04
Speaker 1: Civic Center had another collapse in the year before in
28:06
Speaker 1: seventy eight. The chat Plain Towers in Miami that collapsed
28:11
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one, they were built in that time,
28:13
Speaker 1: in the late seventies and early eighties, So it just
28:16
Speaker 1: seems like it was a time where you know, people
28:19
Speaker 1: were probably just rushing around trying to make money. Greed
28:22
Speaker 1: is always a factor, I think in stuff like this
28:24
Speaker 1: and just trying to build bill build.
28:27
Speaker 2: So yeah, but.
28:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there were it was a cascading chain of
28:32
Speaker 3: failures to not pass the buck, to actually stop and
28:37
Speaker 3: look at things. But you can really lay at the
28:39
Speaker 3: most at Duncan and Gilliam's feet, and that tribunal that
28:43
Speaker 3: Gillam went through found, like you said, that he was
28:46
Speaker 3: grossly negligent, But the way that they proved his negligence
28:50
Speaker 3: was that his firm had a policy that the engineer
28:54
Speaker 3: of record on any project had to verify all plans
28:57
Speaker 3: and all changes them before stamping.
29:02
Speaker 2: It with approval.
29:03
Speaker 3: And the fact that he had failed to meet his
29:05
Speaker 3: own requirements, that tribunal said, that's proof positive that you
29:09
Speaker 3: were negligent in this. And then they also said, apparently
29:13
Speaker 3: he had a lot of pushback that he was giving.
29:16
Speaker 3: He would not accept responsibility. He deflected it at every turn,
29:21
Speaker 3: and it was so his attitude about it was so cavalier.
29:24
Speaker 2: They said that.
29:26
Speaker 3: They cited it as an additional breach of professional obligations.
29:32
Speaker 3: It was that bad that, like his refusal accept responsibility,
29:36
Speaker 3: was yet another piece of negligence that happened after the fact.
29:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, if all this stuff sounds criminal,
29:47
Speaker 1: none of it rose to any kind of criminal proceeding.
29:51
Speaker 4: It was a civil legal quagmire.
29:56
Speaker 1: Like we said, it was owned by Hallmark Cards, this
29:58
Speaker 1: building and the ones around and there were one hundred
30:02
Speaker 1: and thirty plus lawsuits. They didn't all get together and
30:06
Speaker 1: kind of go after them together, which you know sometimes
30:09
Speaker 1: can happen.
30:10
Speaker 4: They were fragmented.
30:11
Speaker 1: Some people went at it alone, some people got together
30:13
Speaker 1: with you know a few other people. And there were
30:16
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty suits plus total, seeking more than
30:20
Speaker 1: three billion dollars in damages. The hotel costs fifty million
30:24
Speaker 1: dollars to build to begin with, like the entire operation,
30:28
Speaker 1: And depending on the cases, they always settled, sometimes kind
30:34
Speaker 1: of right up until they were supposed to go to trial.
30:36
Speaker 1: But they did settle all of them in various ways.
30:41
Speaker 1: There was a woman named Winfred Witscher who got five
30:44
Speaker 1: hundred dollars because her face got cut. There was a
30:48
Speaker 1: widow and four kids of Henry Botnan who got six
30:53
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars. Different federal courts would come in or
30:57
Speaker 1: different judges would come in and basically say all right,
31:01
Speaker 1: let's let's get together on a large settlement when it
31:04
Speaker 1: ended up being one thousand dollars to basically anybody who
31:07
Speaker 1: could prove they were there period, like whether or not
31:10
Speaker 1: they were injured. If you could prove you were there,
31:12
Speaker 1: you would get a thousand bucks.
31:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I guess waive any right to sue after
31:17
Speaker 3: that point. Well, sure, But they ended up paying out
31:20
Speaker 3: something like one hundred and forty million dollars. Most of
31:22
Speaker 3: it came from Hallmark.
31:24
Speaker 4: Yeah, I saw one fifty well, and that's.
31:26
Speaker 2: In early eighties dollars, I believe, right.
31:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean not close to the three bill.
31:32
Speaker 2: No, no, no, for sure.
31:33
Speaker 3: But they Hallmark ended up paying out, mostly because they
31:37
Speaker 3: were the ultimate owner of that hotel, and from what
31:41
Speaker 3: I saw, they were. There was a guy who was
31:45
Speaker 3: suing Hallmark, but Hallmark settled, and the lawyer had done
31:49
Speaker 3: all this extensive research and discovery and it basically found
31:52
Speaker 3: that Hallmark was really more culpable than anyone thought, and
31:57
Speaker 3: Hallmark's Hallmark settled. The thing never got published, but I
32:02
Speaker 3: got the impression that's why Hallmark ended up spending the
32:05
Speaker 3: most money out of anybody to settle these claims.
32:10
Speaker 2: And the.
32:12
Speaker 3: Whole experience just tore the town apart because there were
32:16
Speaker 3: people who wanted to get to the truth and wanted,
32:18
Speaker 3: you know, retribution, and apparently the business community really wanted
32:22
Speaker 3: to kind of sweep it under the rug for a
32:24
Speaker 3: lot of different reasons. But I think a lot of
32:27
Speaker 3: the boosters were like, this is a black eye on
32:28
Speaker 3: the city. I saw it described as and the Kansas
32:31
Speaker 3: City Star and the Kansas City Times said no, no, no,
32:35
Speaker 3: we're going to report on this. Even in the face
32:36
Speaker 3: of community pushback, I guess, and they won pulisers for
32:42
Speaker 3: their reporting for local reporting because they got to the
32:47
Speaker 3: bottom of what actually happened.
32:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a guy, like you said, there was
32:52
Speaker 1: a news crew on the scene anyway for the tea dance,
32:56
Speaker 1: and this cameraman was filming a lot of the aftermath,
32:59
Speaker 1: and he had people there that were victims that were
33:03
Speaker 1: coming up trying to like rip his camera away and
33:05
Speaker 1: start a fight with the guy, saying he shouldn't be
33:08
Speaker 1: shooting that stuff. But people came to his defense in
33:11
Speaker 1: the moment. What I don't get is how I mean,
33:15
Speaker 1: I know Hallmark ultimately will pay because they were the
33:17
Speaker 1: parent company, But how did someone say they were more
33:20
Speaker 1: culpable than when it's really obvious that it was a
33:25
Speaker 1: design change that was rubber stamped by this design firm, Like,
33:30
Speaker 1: what did Hallmark? It's not like they ran that up
33:32
Speaker 1: the greeting card chain and they said, yeah, let's do that.
33:36
Speaker 3: This is the impression I have that the whole thing
33:40
Speaker 3: was fast and loose and cutting corners was in part
33:43
Speaker 3: because Hallmark or the subsidiary Hallmark owned the hotel, was
33:48
Speaker 3: cheaping out and one of the one piece of evidence
33:52
Speaker 3: I saw that kind of puts that together was from Gillham,
33:56
Speaker 3: who one of his defenses was I asked for on
33:59
Speaker 3: site in spaces, at the metal fabricators, at the job site, everywhere,
34:04
Speaker 3: and Hallmark wouldn't shell out the extra money to make
34:07
Speaker 3: that happen. Had there been an inspector on site, then
34:10
Speaker 3: this would have never happened kind of thing. So I
34:15
Speaker 3: think one of the reasons why the business community wanted
34:17
Speaker 3: to sweep it on the rug is Hallmark is the
34:19
Speaker 3: It was, at least at the time, the far and
34:21
Speaker 3: away the largest employer in Kansas City, very much beloved.
34:24
Speaker 3: A lot of people owed their livelihood to Hallmark, Their
34:29
Speaker 3: kids went to college because of Hallmark. It was a
34:32
Speaker 3: really well regarded company. And apparently that that was that
34:38
Speaker 3: facade or whatever, that image was attacked by the Times
34:42
Speaker 3: in the Star. And that was one reason why some
34:44
Speaker 3: people were so against that reporting, because even if you
34:46
Speaker 3: didn't have anything to hide, but you still had an
34:48
Speaker 3: affinity for Hallmark because they were your employer, you might
34:51
Speaker 3: be upset at the news for reporting that kind of thing.
34:54
Speaker 1: Even sure, a lot of the many millions of dollars
34:58
Speaker 1: were ear Mark for charities that Hallmark donated to as
35:02
Speaker 1: part of.
35:03
Speaker 4: These plea deals.
35:04
Speaker 1: Hyatt actually sued for four million dollars, but not Hallmark.
35:09
Speaker 1: They sued the design firm. They sued twelve different parties,
35:14
Speaker 1: including the design firm, the GC, the steel manufacturer that
35:18
Speaker 1: I could not find out what happened with those lawsuits,
35:21
Speaker 1: which was really frustrating.
35:23
Speaker 4: But there were lawsuits all over the place.
35:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a mess. And as you would expect,
35:27
Speaker 3: and like I said to this, the shadow hung over
35:30
Speaker 3: the entire city for a decade. Apparently it came in
35:32
Speaker 3: a really terrible time because the city had just gone
35:35
Speaker 3: through a burst of prosperity, I think, and this hotel
35:38
Speaker 3: was kind of a symbol of that, and so it
35:41
Speaker 3: kind of really shook the foundations of this kind of
35:45
Speaker 3: exuberant Kansas City. Like you know how like when you're
35:48
Speaker 3: the more excited you are, the more happy you are,
35:51
Speaker 3: the harder you fall when something comes along and just
35:55
Speaker 3: completely undermines that. I get the impression that that was
35:59
Speaker 3: kind of what up into Kansas City. It took a
36:01
Speaker 3: long time for it to recover. It wasn't until two
36:03
Speaker 3: thousand and eight that they even managed to erect a
36:06
Speaker 3: memorial because Apparently there's so many people who didn't want
36:09
Speaker 3: to think about it or talk about it or memorialize it.
36:12
Speaker 3: But somebody, some of the survivor's family or some of
36:16
Speaker 3: the victims' families got together and created a memorial at
36:21
Speaker 3: a park just a block or so away, and Hallmark
36:25
Speaker 3: kicked in twenty five thousand dollars.
36:27
Speaker 4: That's right to build the memorial itself.
36:32
Speaker 1: It is still there, the higher regency is and those
36:35
Speaker 1: that atream is still there, and the walkway on the
36:37
Speaker 1: second floor is still there. Of course, it's not held
36:39
Speaker 1: up by it's not suspended. It is held from underneath
36:43
Speaker 1: by columns and obvious And you know, I mentioned the
36:46
Speaker 1: PTSD for first responders. That was a big push after this,
36:51
Speaker 1: and then also just you know, a general tightening up
36:55
Speaker 1: of and this wasn't just in Kansas City, this was
36:58
Speaker 1: an international incident. So it really shook up the industry
37:03
Speaker 1: as far as how fast and loose things were going overall.
37:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know the asse. The American Society of Civil
37:10
Speaker 3: Engineers came out and said, unambiguously, if you're the engineer
37:16
Speaker 3: of record, you have to verify every single change or
37:19
Speaker 3: you are completely responsible for anything that happens as a
37:23
Speaker 3: result of that. It's on you, like, just want to
37:26
Speaker 3: make sure we're clear about that. And that was that
37:28
Speaker 3: was a change that came directly from that and from
37:30
Speaker 3: Gillham himself.
37:31
Speaker 4: Well, the buck has to stop with somebody.
37:34
Speaker 1: It was a situation where everybody was finger pointing and
37:38
Speaker 1: when when you can point to a single decision that
37:43
Speaker 1: that caused this and not like well it was sort
37:45
Speaker 1: of this and this and this right like that these
37:48
Speaker 1: things had had they not even had that tea dance,
37:51
Speaker 1: eventually they would have collapsed.
37:53
Speaker 4: They just weren't built correctly.
37:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's uh, it's nuts.
37:57
Speaker 3: I saw that even the original design wouldn't have met
38:00
Speaker 3: code for holding up people, wouldn't have reached those killing
38:04
Speaker 3: newtons that it needed.
38:07
Speaker 1: You got anything else, No, I got nothing else. Big
38:12
Speaker 1: shout out to the people of Kansas City. I hope
38:14
Speaker 1: to do a show there one day. We did go
38:15
Speaker 1: to Lawrence, Kansas and Saint Louis in the general area,
38:19
Speaker 1: but we have not hit Kansas City yet.
38:22
Speaker 4: So we'll do that one day.
38:23
Speaker 3: Yes, one day we will for sure. And since Chuck
38:26
Speaker 3: just promised Kansas City we're going to come to a show.
38:29
Speaker 3: Of course, he unlocked listener mail.
38:34
Speaker 4: I'm gonna call this just something a little lighter.
38:38
Speaker 1: I think we could use it, yeah, because we inadvertently well,
38:43
Speaker 1: I'll just read it. Hey, guys, been listening to the
38:44
Speaker 1: show for about six years. My first time writing in
38:47
Speaker 1: to highlight an ongoing mistake that is nonetheless hilarious and
38:51
Speaker 1: I assume completely unintentional. During the twenty two Halloween episode,
38:56
Speaker 1: Josh voice one of the great characters in English literature,
38:59
Speaker 1: Megal in the toll House. But in subsequent episodes, when
39:03
Speaker 1: you guys, namely Chuck, tries to get Josh to do
39:05
Speaker 1: the voice, he refers to him as Smiegel. Spiegel, of course,
39:09
Speaker 1: is the hobbit from the Lord of the Rings who's
39:11
Speaker 1: corrupted by the One Ring and eventually transformed into Gollum.
39:14
Speaker 1: After hearing this, I went back and red listened to
39:17
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty two Halloween episode again, and I can
39:20
Speaker 1: sure I can assure you that the toll House is
39:21
Speaker 1: even better second time around. First, and now I can
39:25
Speaker 1: just imagine a mixture of Josh and Andy serkis narrating
39:28
Speaker 1: the dialogue of Smiegele Gollum as the Meagle character in question.
39:32
Speaker 1: I almost didn't want to write in because of this
39:34
Speaker 1: to make you aware of.
39:35
Speaker 4: This hilarious error.
39:37
Speaker 1: Though I assume someone will eventually beat me to it,
39:40
Speaker 1: but not true. Josh Bills Borrow, you were the first
39:43
Speaker 1: to write in. We did get a couple of people
39:45
Speaker 1: that wrote in after you though that Yeah, he were first,
39:49
Speaker 1: Ease and Josh is from Madison, Connecticut.
39:52
Speaker 2: Way to go, Josh, thanks for that.
39:54
Speaker 3: Thanks to everybody who wrote in to say the same thing,
39:56
Speaker 3: because it is pretty hilarious.
39:59
Speaker 2: Maybe that's why I'm if I Migle's been off.
40:01
Speaker 3: I've been accidentally doing sgle proughly. So well, we'll get
40:05
Speaker 3: to the bottom of that, everybody. I promise Megel will
40:07
Speaker 3: be back someday.
40:08
Speaker 2: Someday.
40:09
Speaker 3: Uh And if you want to get in touch of this,
40:11
Speaker 3: like Josh at all did, you can send us an
40:13
Speaker 3: email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
40:20
Speaker 1: You Know, Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
40:23
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
40:27
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.