My dad owns a drywall company and builds huge skyscrapers all over California and I can tell you the biggest issue is that whoever wants the building built, always wants it rushed. DONT. RUSH. IT.
Yup I worked in the drafting department of an engineering company. By the time it got my desk is was already way past deadline. And it was hurry up. Rush.
@@rrknl5187 you get it! they always wants things rushed! Like I understand they want things done quick but when they’re done too fast, things like this happen and then everyone wants to blame the contractor when it’s the client that rushed the whole thing🙄 Luckily my dad is smart enough to tell them “look, it just not possible to have it done that quick” and usually the client understands after that
@@Meenadevidasi yep! I’ve been hearing the same thing my whole life from my dad. Always talking about how “they want us to be done quicker” lol but my dad won’t rush for anyone. There’s too much on the line if you rush things. Rome wasn’t built in a day!
Another thing they should do (at least down south they do this alot) is construction professions and engineers usually overestimate on stuff. So like they tell you it'll take about 10 months to build the house. They usually throw in 2 weeks to 1 month extra to account for on site snafus or delays like rainy weather or delayed materials. If you finish earlier you're seen like a god damn prophet of stone and caulking. If not you're just seen as a punctual individual. Wish more people did this tbh. My grandpa was a carpenter and did this. It's how he kept getting good thumbs up and calls from friends of the people who employed him through word of mouth.
My father was killed in the collapse , my mother was injured and survived. My mother wanted to see the building torn down and never could look at it when driving by. She was one of the lucky ones, but suffered the aftermath for the rest of her years. She lived to be 96.
@@gundog-yk8mk that may be true in some areas. We live in a rural community in Texas and our farmers and construction workers are quick to lend aid without being asked
I remember seeing a metaphor somewhere that explained the scope of this engineering mistake. Imagine you and a friend are dangling from the same rope, you holding a knot halfway up and your friend holding a knot on the bottom. All the weight is taken by the rope, and both people are only holding their own weight. Now replace the one rope with two ropes: one attached to the ceiling you're holding on to, and one attached to you that your friend is holding on to. Your friend is in the same position, but you are now holding your friend's weight in addition to your own, and stretched between the two ropes. Of course the real thing is a bit more complex, but this helped me understand the basics of the problem much better.
Plus adding more weight to the friend dangling would make both fall faster. It's why alot of things have max occupancy or max weight on dangling structures (such as elevators).
the problem in this case is not even so much about that, of course its a fact that tension shifts to the upper rod, but it is a smaller rod with the same properties, if the short rod had been upgraded, if possibble, to one who could resist the weight without problems then it would be okay, but they just did what they wanted like they actually did, they werent qualified to take desicions.
They covered this one in an engineering class I took; I'm still shocked at the negligence involved in one seemingly harmless decision. This is why designers and construction crew need to all be on the same page :/
As an accountant I can tell you that almost every single job I've had the accountants are responsible for everything but have no power & generally aren't listened to (or even asked). Other dept managers don't tolerate an accountant telling them they better turn in their reports or receipts & money left over from their travels etc! Even worse the accountants know why the numbers mean what they mean. The President, sales teams etc only know that numbers are what they are. You'd think for certain they'd run many things by the accountants & that they'd reach to them for greater understanding of financials over time but ime it hasn't generally ever happened with me. I've seen higher ups run multi-million dollar corps straight into the ground & for rather stupid reasons that definitely didn't need to happen that way but for stupid management being off the leash & unblocked from going nuts with money etc.
If you're interested there's a podcast called "Well there's your problem" that looks at engineering disasters and they've done an episode on it. Haven't listened to it yet so I can't speak to the quality of it, but it looks interesting. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Hw2t0MOGnVc.html
I remember watching the news cover this shortly after it happened. As I recall, a football star was one of the people attending the party. When he was interviewed during the aftermath, he kept talking about how, for all his strength, he couldn't do a thing to rescue the injured, the debris was just too heavy. It was clear that he was devastated by having to stand by helplessly as people buried in the rubble screamed for help. What a nightmare.
Hi Kaedis, it was actually Rich Gale who was a pitcher for the Kansas City Royals who was working down their during the baseball strike. He was definitely traumatized for a long time. The video was right about most people in KC either knowing someone who died or was injured, or knowing someone that lost a family member. One of my sister’s friends lost both her parents. One of my mom’s friends was supposed to be there but begged off with a bad headache. It was a hideously awful night.
@@catrinlewis939 I’ve only been down there twice since this happened. In both instances, just crossing through the lobby was disquieting and oppressive. Such a terrible price to pay for an abdication of responsibility on the part of so many.
At least the guy was remorseful and taught people to prevent disasters like the one his company caused. It’s not often that people can accept their wrong doings and actively prevent other tragedies. EDIT: HOLY- I was not expecting this at all! Thanks for the kindness everyone.
@@riverdeep399 honesty and accountability is respected. I caused a small jet fuel spill at a forest fire forward attack base. I had to fill out an incident report. I stated that I thought someone at the site had prepped a tank for loading, but did not verify that a valve that should have been closed was closed. I fully admitted that this was the cause, not the valve, and not the guy on site. I was told by the commander in charge of the base that I was "more honest than most" for not trying to pin it on the other guy.
I was on my way into there that evening for dinner, as my girlfriend was working at the restaurant on the terrace. As I approached the building, folks with bloody clothes were streaming out, saying that they'd thought that a bomb had gone off. I watch this video and it brings back a lot of sadness, memories which I thought that I had forgotten, and have justly wanted to forget.
Close call. Was at a Rare Earth concert at the Uptown Theater only a few blocks away. Happened just as the concert was starting so, w/o cell phones or internet or dig cams, will always recall the wild rumors surrounding the basic fact something big and terrible occurred. Mostly an incorrect big fire then, as lights dimmed, the top rumor was that the large revolving resturant at the top had fallen off and was rolling down Grand like a giant coin, spilling people, debris and flames. Worked as unit sec for 3East at St. Joseph's Hospital at time (way far south) but all were put on alert standby if more of a mass casualty event. Graduate HS from Center Senior; last year had early release days and MANY times just hoped a bus downtown to Crown Center to roam around the shops/hotel. Incl going over those skywalks. Recall the tragedy that seemed to linger; have images of the huge wood panels covering the glass fronts; all the investigations on TV, etc. Then C. 1986 was briefly back in KC from Montana and took a goofy 5-star busboy job located in that same lobby; opposite side but it's on a huge elevated dias w/fences so was like an arena above the same floorspace... merely their ABSENCE was creepy. Evening job; never saw anything ala paranormal but always radiated; like a simmering horror. Simply can't be reconciled in any reassuring formula.
I do wish we had more of the personal accounts and stories, though. I got some in the comments, but I feel like I don't really appreciate the gravity of the situation unless I hear personal accounts...
The genre is called documentary and has been around for a while, but for sure this channel has a nicer way of presenting the facts of tragic events that shaped our history.
This is what the freemasons love. That’s why the cameras were there. Filming it all!! This was a deliberate act of sacrifice! Fact that the media just happened to turn up. And they walked into another room because they claimed their batter ran out. Fact that they invited specific VIP’s. Fact that it collapsed during construction ( practice run) Fact no one was held responsible. Fact that this was a Freemason satanic sacrifice!! Fact it was all planned!!
@@deprofundis3293 You can watch the full documentary on it. The fact it collapsed during building it. And yet they still built it. It was a deliberate act!! Fact that the media just happened to turn up. And they walked into another room because they claimed their batter ran out. Fact that they invited specific VIP’s. Fact that it collapsed during construction ( practice run) Fact no one was held responsible. Fact that this was a Freemason satanic sacrifice!! Fact it was all planned!!
It seems that way because it IS that way. See enough aircraft crash investigations to know that every disaster has a positive side, but ultimately mostly does cost someone something. :/
Yeah, this is something I think a lot of people who roll their eyes at health & safety don't appreciate; *yes* someone *was* in fact stupid enough to do that. That's why I have to tell you about it.
It's truly incredible that someone actually took responsibility . . . and even spoke of his own incompetence for years to come, inviting endless shame in an attempt to prevent further loss of life. Maybe not the best engineer, but certainly a good person.
The way I understood it, he (the Jack guy) actually was a good engineer, and his design would have been safe. I guess the person who looked at the revised design from the manufacturer and signed off on it was an employee of his, so that’s why he took responsibility because you’re always liable as the boss
There's a "Seconds from disaster" doc if you want to know more, but I will say it is a heart-breaking watch and some of the injuries described are downright harrowing.
one detail is that when they began moving the rubble one of the rescuers thought survivors were sitting up. he was horrified to realize that wasn't the case; bodies and pieces of bodies were stuck to the underside of the rubble being lifted up.
The horrifying part is that these lessons always seem to be learned at the expense of numerous lives. Nobody seems to care until a large body count is involved.
HONESTLY being from NYC, living through 9/11, and married to a Marine means that I'm super paranoid and just know my exits. My delightful choice of channels like this one don't help 😅
There was actually a local news crew there videotaping the dance. By sheer coincidence they exited the dance floor and went into another area to change videotapes when the walkways collapsed..
A bit of the footage they shot appears in this video. It's the part taken from the moving escalator as it's going up. Because the videocassette was being changed right at the moment of the collapse, the event did not end up being documented. They were up on the second level of the lobby then.
@@hebneh There is no video, but audio was still being recorded. It's truly horrifying, and a stark but necessary way to start an engineering course at a university.
I remember watching a Mega Disasters episode about this. One of the victims was there with his boyfriend, they were standing right under the walkway when it collapsed. One was killed instantly, and the other survived because he was right next to where it fell. He was tearing up during the interview and it still breaks my heart to this day.
I've seen that episode too (it's up on RU-vid). He said that it looked like his boyfriend was just asleep, but his neck was broken. He may have died instantly and didn't suffer, but I doubt that's enough solace for his sweetheart...
Sometimes just a little bit of difference in distance, or even timing means life or death for one person or another and it's genuinely terrifying to think about. Like, on the titanic there were two friends that jumped from the hull, only one survived because he hesitated for just a moment before jumping, that moment saved him from the suction of the ship going down, while the other person was pulled underwater by the sinking ship and subsequently drowned.
Another guy got crushed and survived, but he was trapped for like a day, after he was found the first thing he asked the doctors was when can he go fishing again. If that isn't the most Middle America sentence ever, then I don't know what is
@@nickrustyson8124 Fishing is a calming activity. He was probably thinking of it in an attempt to help subdue the terror and trauma of what he had just experienced. Mulling over a hobby probably kept him sane. I'd probably thinking of something left-field too if I were in his shoes. The mind does strange things when you've experienced a horrific event.
I used to live in Kansas City. You can still go into the hotel and stand in the exact spot where it happened. It’s very unsettling; the hotel isn’t too keen on people remembering the incident, which makes sense I suppose.
There's a plaque in the lobby memorializing the event. I was staying in KC a number of years ago, and was walking through the lobby of my hotel, and there was something really familiar about it that I couldn't place. Until I saw the plaque, that is. I'd studied the disaster in an Emergency Administration and Planning class in 1990.
I don’t feel it anymore but for several years after, the hair on my neck would stand on end when I would come close to the lobby! You could definitely still feel the trauma energy! I knew several that died that day. 😞
Actually NASA also uses the Challenger as an example. They actually have a closed showroom with pieces of the challenger to show their employees the impact of a mistake. I heard it feels like going to a cementary
Fact that the media just happened to turn up. And they walked into another room because they claimed their batter ran out. Fact that they invited specific VIP’s. Fact that it collapsed during construction ( practice run) Fact no one was held responsible. Fact that this was a Freemason satanic sacrifice!! Fact it was all planned!!
We studied this case in the tension forces unit of my physics class when I was a first year engineering student. And I can confirm, I successfully calculated the increase in tension.
It seemed that the problem wasn't the tension in the rod as much as the loading near the end of the beam? Maybe that photo was a cut-away after the fact, but if not, it was sure close to the end of it. Either way, the beam is what broke, not the rod.
Yeah, but the issue was the amount of tension on each connection point. The original design had each bolt holding the weight of its bridge. But in the new design, the fourth bridge had that plus the amount of tension from the first bridge weighing on its connection points. So even though it was the beam that failed, it failed because it was pulled by too much tension from the rods.
@@missybarbour6885 You know, just watching this video, I had a thought on how to avoid the issue the design change was made to prevent and still have the original design in terms of the statics. You don't want to have the entire length of the rod from the bottom to the fourth-floor walkway be threaded? Fine, just thread it from the *top* to the fourth-floor walkway, greatly reduces the length that has to be threaded and you can install the nut (and beam) *before* hanging the rods. It'll require a stronger crane to hang the rods, sure, since you'll have to hang each fourth-floor beam as a unit, but it means you don't have to have the whole length threaded, and if you do damage the threading in the hanging process, no big deal, the nut's already in place...
@@rdfox76 The rough layout as executed would've worked if engineered properly. Just a proper bearing plate between the nut and the beam surface (like a large washer to redirect the load of the nut onto the sidewalls) on the underside of the beam could've avoided the disaster as happened that day. Seems odd that this wasn't done in the first place, as the concentration of stress on a lonely nut is just asking for trouble. Also, I would've swapped the rod connections on the upper bridge around, so that the lower bridge's weight would counteract instead of compound the existing bending moment on the upper bridge crossbeams caused by the weight of the bridge itself.
The hotel actually started to remove the rubble before an investigation could be done, claiming they would do their own investigation and that the rubble was a "safety hazard" (which isn't untrue, but still, don't move evidence before getting approval to do so). The only reason we know about the bolts was that the people on scene and a journalist started noticing some issues in the ruble and took pictures of it (the pictures you showed), fearing the evidence would disappear or be altered before investigators could stop the hotel. While investigators probably would have been able to suspect what happened without the pictures in many cases the pictures ended up being the only hard evidence left to prove what happened.
A former boss I had was there when this collapsed. He had just stepped off the skywalk and was about 10 feet away when it fell away. He said if he had lingered just 2 to 3 seconds more on the walk he would have fell with it. A good friend of mine had parents that lived in Kansas City. The parents were friends with another couple that happened to be at the dance. The husband realized that the skywalk was collapsing as they were dancing out on the floor and shoved his wife with all his might out of the way. She broke both of her legs but, sadly, her husband perished under fallen rubble.
Now that's the sign of a loving husband and real man to give his life to save the woman he loved. He's one of the unspoken heroes in this world. I hope you're resting in peace brother! 😢
Going to HS at Center not far South, had wandered same skywalks/hotel/entire Crown Center. Amazing place. At Uptown Theater at Rare Earth concert that night; frightening example of rumor burning through the crowd as concert began, sure the restaurant at top had fallen. Later worked at the garden-style cafe in same lobby (86), on big dias over same floorspace and simply the absence of the skywalks was creepy.
@Sharon Bee Do you think witnessing the vast ripple effects of such horror and then, years later, have venue to comment, is fake? I understand and AGREE with that affect but I don't see any "memories" that wouldn't be voluntary burned away. And all posers need to be confronted, too.
When I first saw it I was honestly terrified that something like that could even happen. Here's a link in case anyone is wondering what we're talking about: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-7t-aM9akVtw.html
That was a really sad case. On a wedding day no less D: the bride and groom both lost family members and I think the bride herself was seriously injured.
"I was in Vietnam 18 months, and I never saw anything like what it was in that hotel," added Allman, 30, who was working on a construction project across the street when the collapse occurred. "I'll be sitting, talking to someone, and I'll see the bodies. That's too much for anyone to cope with." - Allman, a jackhammer operator who helped rescue survivors in the accident. Sadly, he took his own life soon afterwards. Rest in peace.
This poor man. Thankyou for the correction regarding the timing of his death. It makes more sense to me. When horrific things like this happen, people forget that those involved in retrieval and rescue are victims as well. The magnitude of what they faced is just as real and just as haunting. People fight so hard to move on from that but sometimes it isn't always possible to make it through.
My uncle was a police officer at the time who responded. He refused to talk about it other than saying how much blood there was. The vibe of the place feels off every time I visit.
I read about someone who visited there about 5-6 years ago and took pictures, and they said the same thing...that it still has a kind of "off" and a little bit of a disturbing feeling. It could just be from knowing that such a horrible accident happened there, but you never know.
@@Pirategirl4nightwish oh God, that's the kind of thing that will give you nightmares. I can't even imagine what those poor people went through. And now the building collapse in Florida. They were able to figure out what caused the Hyatt walkways to collapse...I hope eventually we'll know what went wrong with the building in Florida, so it NEVER happens again.
I remember this , and as part of EMT class we listened to the emergency communications of that incident . One 12 year old boy was trapped and a fire fighter crawled into where he was at and stayed with him until he could be rescued .
Yeah, the kid was trapped with his mom. They both survived. I saw one documentary where they showed clips of him being interviewed shortly after it happened, and there is also a more recent interview when he was an adult. I can't imagine how horrific that would have been for anyone, but especially a little kid!
One guy that lived and he supposedly was the last guy rescued was talking to a 12 year old girl for hours while rescuers were digging people out he made out, but she we died during the night.
Negligience by engineers or builders. But many times also by managers or operators who don't stick to on-site installation (in case of mobile equipment like cranes) and maintenance protocol. One thing is clear: the user is never to blame unless he really asks for it. For example, if you stand on that Hyatt walkway packed together, that's what people do without much thought, engineer needs to dimension in respect for that. But a crowd jumping in sync to the structure's natural frequency would probably be blamed on the crowd.
@@MrSaemichlaus i mean first off if you can get an entire crowd to do that that would be amazing on its own and asking for trouble. 2nd it does depend. Some factors you can't account for. Some of the biggest are mother nature, the passage of time, and the human ability to find a way to make the impossible happen in the most unusual and stupidest of ways. It's why we have things like monthly inspections, rigorous safety classes and lessons, and people hard pushing for changes in laws for regulating how stuff is made built and maintained.
@@TiberianFiend I too thought that this was the cause at first, as there was actual reason for people to dance on the walkway at that event. The swiss army has a rule that requires formations to not march in common cadence over bridges to avoid dynamic structure failures. For another example, the millenium bridge in London was shut down shortly after its opening because it oscillated sideways at only 1 Hz (humans walk around 2 Hz and will react to existing oscillations by synchronizing their walking with it, thus worsening it, until it gets too scary and they will stop walking and the oscillation slowly weakens). The bridge was improved by fitting dampened weights to the structure. While the Hyatt walkways likely tolerated the surplus of static load thanks to safety factors, dynamic loading probably delivered the final blow.
I met a female architect whose family was sitting there underneath the walkways when the event happened. She lost her entire family before her eyes. When I met her she was just getting over the event some decades later. She and I both had PTSD and that is how we met
Also the phenomenon of anyone who had a question about it, believed likely rightly, that any question would be not staying in their lane, and seen as stupid or meddling. Maybe someone did wonder if it was an ok change, but had been shot down enough to never speak truth to power. That is the result of arrogance from the top.
One phrase I will never forget that I saw on a box at work said "YOU are the last form of quality control" meaning you were the last employee with eyeballs on the product before the public interacted with it.
"They replaced the single long rod with two, shorter rods." Me, having never taken a single engineering course in my life: "Wait, wouldn't that mean the lower walkway would basically be hanging from the upper walkway, instead of both hanging from the ceiling?" "'Any first-year engineering student cold figure it out...'" Me: "Or anyone who took high school physics, even."
True. It actually doesn't take a genius to figure out that replacing or changing something will make it different no matter how similar they are. Actually learned stuff like this in an advanced math course at my local uni when still in middle school that i took in summer. We learned things like shapes of triangles vs squares, tension distribution, and of course things like pillars and always having extra support to account for greater or lesser strains.
Yeah exactly. The original plan should've been the one that was used. So what if handling the longer rods would've been a bit delicate, it also would've been SAFER. But they went with the El-Cheapo plan and used the shorter rod for the top walkway and longer one to support the lower walkway via the top one. Somebody somewhere along the way should've realized that if the lower walkway began buckling due to excess weight because of overcrowding, then it would've pulled DOWN the top walkway along with it. Yikes. :-o
I didn't take high school physics and saw it was a bad idea as soon as he mentioned it. The truth is, they probably knew a few dozen people would be killed anyways, but who cares? They Would save time and oooobvioisly that's more important There's no way they couldn't have seen that flaw
I read a book about the 1981 Major League Baseball strike which was going on at this time. The book said a pitcher for the Kansas City Royals was at the Tea Dance as a celebrity bartender. He was across the lobby from the walkway collapse. Many dance goers were talking to him when the collapse occurred. The book said the fact that the pitcher was drawing so many people who wanted to be near him possibly prevented the death toll from being far worse.
@@kndr2094 Not that I know of. My grandfather (a new retired surgeon) had just completed a marathon shift in the trauma unit and grandma had been watching my cousin and I that afternoon. They decided last minute that they just didn't feel like getting dressed up, driving all the way downtown just to attend.
@@victorcoleman949 Oh okay! Sorry! I just saw basicallt this exact comment on at least one other video. I mean, people know people, its bound to happen. Glad your grandparents were spared!
I am a KC native and was 18 when this happened. My father was a pastor at a local church and many in our congregation went to the hotel to aid in the rescue efforts. I remember my dad having many counseling sessions to those who ultimately dealt with the haunting memories of what they heard and saw in the rubble. So sad.
I think there were aspects of the design that made the buildings more susceptible to catastrophic collapse in case of fire. If I remember correctly the weight of each floor wasn't distributed throughout(?) so that meant entire floors failed rather than portions, and that caused a chain reaction which brought them down. But yeah, definitely precipitated by outside forces. (And of course many died before the collapse.)
Many structural engineers would agree with you on that Mack, there have been more than a couple accidentlyonpurpose deaths connected with the WTC and all nicely detracts from Donald Rumsfeld's missing $2 or $3 billion and how an ordinary passenger jet had managed to penetrate the Pentagons armoured structure and new windows which had only just been upgraded by the taxpayer that housed the receipts and paperwork for the shortfall. Nothing was left of the plane, no wheels or plane wreckage, not even the titanium parts and all 56 camera's had nothing except one that had an explosion flash, that was it. I would also be interested to see the thermite production and sales statistics for the 10 years before 9/11 and then 10 years after to see if there was a sales spike in August of the attack year.
@@petergambier I wasn't trying to get into conspiracy theories, dude. I'm just saying that you can't really expect engineers to prepare their buildings for airplane collisions.
Seriously that just sums up how hopeless the whole thing was. Water everywhere. Huge lumps of concrete on top of people. Fire alarms going off. People dead all over the place. People screaming and dying. The power is out. It's dark. And you have to start cutting limbs off living and dead people because it's the quickest way to save them. Literally a nightmare
As a first year Architecture student in 1996, we studied this failure in our Design Foundations class as an important lesson on not making designs overly complex, and to work with materials manufacturers and engineers to ensure a design is safe and sane.
I saw a documentary about this and wondered when we would get to see your take on the disaster. It was truly horrifying and the footage of the events surrounding the disaster are haunting. Crazy how much damage one miscommunication and oversight can cause.
it wasn't miscommunication, it was a design change caused by a non-engineer who decided it would be "better" to do it this way because it would save building frustration. The problem was nobody passed it by the actual design team.
@@juliusnepos6013 That, or one of History Channel's old Modern Marvels "Engineering Disasters" series, back when History Channel still had actual history on it...
@@juliusnepos6013 I couldn't find the one on history channel but here are others ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-czmQS81k9eM.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-AWOYoG7HzNQ.html
I am a Kansas City native, and was only 7 years old when this happened, but I absolutely remember it. My mom worked downtown at Crown Center when this event happened. I don’t think she was ever the same afterward. It was shocking, horrific, and people talked about it for a very, very long time afterward.
We moved to KC area in 1998. I met a fire inspector who was a responder to the collapse. He spoke of the horror of having survivors that could not be rescued. He personally had held the hand of a lady while she slowly died from the weight of the debris. His face, telling his testimony, spoke volumes about the pain he suffered because of the experience. I can still see his face and the pain it reflected. May all those who died and those who suffered rest in peace and find peace. My deepest sympathies.
Fact that the media just happened to turn up. And they walked into another room because they claimed their battery ran out. Fact that they invited specific VIP’s. Fact that it collapsed during construction ( practice run) Fact no one was held responsible. Fact that this was a Freemason satanic sacrifice!! Fact it was all planned!!
@@rambunctiousorchid3956 oh wait, it was the builders who change the design? All along i thought it was the engineers who change the design last minute
@@Donnie-ys7vr I think it was that the steel manufacturers of the rods said that one single rod was too hard to build and would be damaged during installation so said 2 rods would be better. The engineer gave the new design their approval without having anyone from his firm checking the calculations of how strong the walkway connections were. Apparently, the engineer in charge tried to place the entire blame on the steel manufacturers saying it was standard in Missouri for them to do the calculations instead of the trained engineers...have you heard such bullshit. So the steel manufacturers offered a change in design and the engineer accepted the change without checking the calculations and testing it's strength
@@devonmay5960 damn i wonder how those engineers even got their license in the first place. I’m still surprised how none of them face any criminal charges for their gross negligence and only lost their license.
I decided to look up the images for this, and at 3:54 you used the first image I found...and I see you had to cut off the bottom right. That...is pretty gruesome. I do appreciate the level of professionalism you use here in your videos, all of them. Well done.
The stories of te smell of blood bodily functions masonary water spilled alcohol and arcing electricity that the rescuers and victims recount is appaling. I cant imagine being able to deal with that horror but they did bless em.
I've lived in Kansas City my whole life and been inside this Hyatt many times. It's unbelievable that they have no memorial there and that the city basically has no memories of this and doesn't talk about it. The hotel is still there
The local news has a segment every few years. A memorial was erected in 2015. (Finally!) I hope to check it out some time. A classmate's parents were killed as was a teacher of mine. I still worry about the classmate...
Old comment, but there's a sculpture across the street at Children's Mercy Hospital. I moved to Missouri side late 2019....and just got the courage to visit it last week. Research "Skywalk Memorial Foundation."
Thank you for covering this topic. I had a cousin to die in the walkway collapse; she had died instantly in the disaster. I appreciate your videos and your straight-forward way of presentation - Thank you!
If I was you I’d be opening up the case! And have all those responsible jailed!! Sorry for your loss. Fact that the media just happened to turn up. And they walked into another room because they claimed their batter ran out. Fact that they invited specific VIP’s. Fact that it collapsed during construction ( practice run) Fact no one was held responsible. Fact that this was a Freemason satanic sacrifice!! Fact it was all planned!!
If you want more detail about this RU-vid has a little 5 part thingy on this called "Minute by Minute" it shows documentation of the survivors accounts.
As cool as that is, I'm not sure if I should be able to handle that. This was already so hard for me. But it's also good that survivors get to tell their stories
"Any first year engineer could figure it out..." - that's an understatement. I figured it out from what I learned working in my father's workshop and he is a doctor not engineer...
If you want to learn more there's a Seconds from Disaster ep about it. I hesitate to recommend it, only bc of that series' stupid penchant for needless over-dramatization (constant hype music etc) and some of the injuries described are just *harrowing*. That said, there's a lot of information, and we do get to hear from eyewitnesses and survivors.
I was three and a half at the time, but I remember the initial TV news coverage of this. Not much of it, but as soon as it was mentioned on an episode of "Engineering Disasters," I vaguely remembered the reports. I have even hazier memories of the MGM Las Vegas fire from 1980, though, so...
Unrelated but may I ask, what were you doing at the world trade center attacks in 2001? I'm always interested in hearing stories of it from older people who I'm sure still remember it.
This event has always sent a chill down my spine since my family and I had stood on those very same sky-walks during an overnight vacation to KC just one week before they collapsed. If our plans had been set a week later we would been there when the sky-walks came down.
Imagine you’re lying in bed at night with your eyes closed and suddenly you hear Fascinating Horror’s background music playing from the corner of your room
I'm no engineer but just looking at the change to the blueprints makes me go "uhhhh that's going to have to carry a loooot of weight. Doesn't feel right!"
Ikr, if a normal civilian can defiantly see what a stupid idea it is, an engineer should too. Watching these videos has made me question my faith in engineers
I remember when this happened. I was ten. The reason it stands out in my memory is because it's the only time in my life so far that I was watching TV and it was interrupted by the Emergency Broadcast System- the full tilt boogie old-school EBS, not just the modern annoying whine they use for storm warnings. I honestly thought it was nuclear war.
Some things you should do videos on: 1. That mall that collapsed because they took out support beams to put in more escalators. If I recall, the people who made this decision straight up went to prison over it 2. The Saint Francis dam collapse that hit people so hard with billions of gallons of stolen water that the bottom silt alone buried people alive instantly, they found just the tip of a guy's fingers sticking out of the silt, he was buried standing upright and was instantly entombed, terrible. People were washed as far away as Mexico. The dam was in California. 3. The incident where the front window of a plane got ripped off yanking one of the pilots out, the other crew members held onto his legs for dear life so his instantly frozen body (stuck to the top of the plane dangling in the wind by his legs) wouldn't get sucked into the engines and further damage the plane. His frozen body was revived and no one died surprisingly, but still horrifying
This hotel is a popular conference venue in Kansas City. As a 20+ year resident I’ve been there for events many times, and the atmosphere is a little different in the lobby - a kind of quiet that exists no matter what is happening. People remember and still talk about it here. Every city has a few landmark moments in its history where you see the worst and the best at the same time, and the Skywalk collapse certainly was for Kansas City. It’s a big city that can still feel like a small town. The local response was tremendous, but the memory is still there.
A now retired coworker of mine was among the first EMT’s to respond to this incident. His accounts of the event were very shocking to hear and the trauma of course still haunts him in some ways.
This is actually one of the first news reports I can remember. The only things prior to this I can specifically remember watching was the 1980 Presidential election, 1980 Olympics, and the Iran hostage crisis. So that tells you the shock this story caused.
When I was in the military I was friends with a KC local who took me on a macabre tour of the city. This hotel lobby was the final stop. I never really grasped what she told me about it until the RU-vid era when I could actually see the film and photos. Chilling to think I stood in that exact place.
These stories are always more frightening to me than any fictional horror, because it's all real. The lives lost and ruined were real human lives, and all because of ignorance and thoughtlessness.
@@happyfacefries Yeah it reminds me of that one wedding incident where the floor gave way and a lot of people fell 3 stories down. I want to say it was from 2002 and somewhere in the Middle East but I'm not entirely sure
This is such an absorbing series. It’s like a way to study history by studying these sudden moments of tragedy that catch everyone going about their lives. Going back all the way to Pompeii, disaster has been a compelling framing for viewing our history in so many ways. Please do the Johnstown Flood and the Texas City Disaster.
@@Newwaytoofeelthepain most these comments are just people seeking attention via lying they 99.9% the time don't have relatives that were there or almost there. It's for likes and attention
@@ayajade6683 Bullcrap. Maybe dumbass Millennials do that now with RECENT disasters and so that's why you think all the comments are "fake." But do you really think that no one who witnessed the skywalk collapse ever goes on the internet or uses RU-vid? It happened in a large city at a popular social event. A LOT of people were there. You think NO ONE knew people who were there?
Seems to be a feature at Hyatt Regencys, I've been to a few and they each had balconies and floors that would shake and move in concerts, so much so that we'd be told to calm down at times
@ZephyrFluous: That’s rather alarming to know Hyatt Regency’s response in asking concert goers to calm down indicates there must be other of their buildings still in usage with potentially similar defects, & that Hyatt Regency itself are seemingly aware of this, & are apparently happy to continue attracting such vast numbers to their venues in the full knowledge of what happened with _this_ horrific structural collapse.😳😬
@@lornaginetteharrison7168 to be fair it may be a case of them just being overly cautious specifically because of that. Like ‘we know these are well built but we thought that before so guys calm down just in case’.
Many modern structures are designed to be able to flex a little, skyscrapers sway in earthquakes for example. It can be safer than making them really heavy and rigid so they don't move. So it's not necessarily a problem as long as movement is within safety limits.
i remember watching the seconds to disaster episode about this, one of the survivors was almost killed by rescuers because they were standing directly where he was buried they were drilling right on top of him, if they didn't hear his screams in time he would have been killed...
@@socialmoth4974 He is. He presents them respectfully and gets all the details right. He doesn't overhype the fascinating or horror aspects--which I suspected when I watched the first one--he just lets the facts speak for themselves. Watch the A-bomb one!😱...And if you've got a big appetite for this stuff, try out Brief Case. There are a ton of them, and they're well done, and they're about more obscure criminals. Anyway, have fun.😁
I used to live in Kansas city, and worked with a man who helped the night this all happened. He worked down the street as a maintenance man, he was just out of high school. When he heard what had happened, he ran down and tried to get inside to help. Security made him leave so he walked over to where the ambulances were and saw a sticker on one of the pieces of equipment they were unloading it was a red cross. He peeled it off stuck it on his blue maintenance jumpsuit, and went back in and helped for several hours. He told me horrific stories that I won't repeat here. He seemed both distraught and relieved to tell me those stories. It takes a special kind of person to do what he did.
tom scott had an engineer guest on his channel to discuss this, and he explained the extra stress in the changed model brilliantly: let's say you and your friend are hanging onto a rope. in the original mode, you are both holding onto the rope independently. in the revised model, the one that ended up being built, your friend was hanging on by your ankles.
The video doc of this incident gives me chills to this day. That man with his dislocated legs up near his ears? Looking up photos will harm your brain.
Excellent video. My apartment is 2 miles from this place. As a young man I remember walking across the top walkway several times weeks before this incident. One thing that I might add is the structural flaw was even more aggravated by having many, many people on the walkways at the same time dancing. A live band was playing music from the big band era. As the music played, people were swaying back and forth unaware that their motion was causing even more of a stress on the poorly designed walkways. A news station KMBC was there to cover the Tea Dance. Film footage was shot on the main floor of everyone having a good time. The film crew and reporter then when up to the elevated restaurant also in the lobby. There they were changing out the film in the camera when the skywalks collapsed. They quickly reloaded the camera and caught the immediate aftermath of what had happened just seconds before. A very shocking and sad night for Kansas City.
Heard of this incident my first year in college as a Civil Engineer. Unfortunately, you'd be surprised how many corners in construction still get cut because of the increase bureaucracy surrounding design and construction of a structure thus saving money for any of the companies involved. As well as paying off inspectors, iys cheaper to do so
Cheaper to do so....until you gotta pay lawsuits and medical costs for dead or gravely injured victims or family of victims IN ADDITION to court and city fees and fines. Wish people wouldn't cut corners in safety. It's always paid for in blood one way or another.
My husband's classmate is a construction inspector and he regularly declines bribes from contractors and even government bureaucrats. He always tells them he'd rather they go to jail.
I think we covered this particular disaster four separate times throughout my college years as a mechanical engineering student, ranging from going through the series of events, to doing static analysis on the diagrams for the walkway before the modification and afterwards. This is probably the single greatest tragedy that is used to help engineering students learn the responsibilities of their trade, closely followed by the Challenger disaster and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse.
It definitely adds an extra dimension to the viewing experience of this channel’s uploads, inducing a feeling of unease & dread in the listener. Plus - this is probably just me! - it sounds like the composer might possibly have been originally inspired by the excellent Nine Inch Nails song 'Closer'!
sounds like mere nitpicking but I really thought I'd stop watching this channel when the last two vids had no music anymore. It adds so much and I kinda fell in love with this particular tune.
One of the doctors who came to the site to help talked about being haunted by the decisions he had to make to forgo trying to treat the most severely injured without a great survival chance so that those with a chance of survival could be saved
As others have said, it's called triage. Usually occurs during a mass casualty event when time is of the essence and resources are short. Logically, it's the best system for such an event. But emotionally it has to be hell to go through.
My dad was at this Hyatt once (not when it fell obviously) but he remembers it and remembers the news about it falling. My mom may have visited it too, pretty freaky really! They were both younger, my dad traveling for work and my mom finishing up college (My dad is 68 and my mom is 60)
About ten years ago I stayed in this hotel, and had seen a documentary about it years earlier. In the lobby, I suddenly realized where we were and what had happened there. My gf was rattled after I told her, but I assured her that this is probably now the safest hotel in the city. It was surreal “accidentally” staying there though and I’m surprised I recognized it after only seeing a documentary once, years earlier.
You’ve hit the big time, man! Your consistently high quality well produced content has earned the high distinction of not only getting me to enable post notifications, but getting me to drop everything I was doing (making breakfast & coffee) to immediately click to watch this! 😃 Because I know this disaster well but was eager to hear your version, and your classic somber voice & signature tense synth theme music haha 👏🏼👏🏼
6:45 That diagram alone explains how this lunacy could have only been approved over the phone, with neither party actually looking at what was being discussed. Holy geez.
I loved how you brought back the eerie background music during the video and paused it for only serious/big points! Seriously, you are my favorite channel on RU-vid!!🙏🏼
God bless those companies and employees that didn’t hesitate to help. It’s weird that something that seems so acceptable to you and I, can cause such horror.
It’s so refreshing to see those responsible actually changing. Most of the time they blame the victims. Edit:NEVERMIND. Just the ONE engineer deserves respect.
This reminds me of a case in my country. They had a big wedding in a 3 story wedding hall and while everybody celebrated, the entire floor collapsed and everybody fell down. 23 dead and 380 injured. There's a video of it happening.
That video is so horrible. Everyone is happy and dancing and then the people in the middle of the room just vanish downwards and people start screaming.
I think other youtubers have covered this. There is one that does crimes and dash cams or videos of disasters shoot outs or other disasters that goes into detail as much as this one. He covered it.