Hyatt Regency walkway collapse

On July 17, 1981, two overhead walkways in the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri collapsed, killing 114 people and injuring 216. Loaded with partygoers, the concrete and glass platforms crashed onto a tea dance in the lobby. The collapse resulted in billions of dollars of insurance claims, legal investigations, and city government reforms.

The hotel had been built just a few years before, during a nationwide pattern of fast-tracked large construction with reduced oversight and major failures. Its roof had partially collapsed during construction, and the ill-conceived skywalk design progressively degraded due to a miscommunication loop of corporate neglect and irresponsibility. An investigation concluded that it would have failed even under one-third of the weight it held that night. Convicted of gross negligence, misconduct and unprofessional conduct, the engineering company lost its national affiliation and all engineering licenses in four states, but was acquitted of criminal charges. Company owner and engineer of record Jack D. Gillum eventually claimed full responsibility for the collapse and its obvious, but unchecked, design flaws, and he became an engineering disaster lecturer.

The disaster contributed many lessons and reforms to engineering ethics and safety, and to emergency management. It was the deadliest non-deliberate structural failure since the collapse of Pemberton Mill over 120 years earlier, and remained the second deadliest structural collapse: 4  in the United States until the collapse of the World Trade Center towers 20 years later.