Talk:Hyatt Regency walkway collapse

Tweaks

Removed assertion that rod would have to have been threaded over a great distance, this assumes constant diameter. It's still there s a possibility, Removed assertion that nut and washer couldn't hold those loads a priori , clearly they almost held double the expected load. If I'm wrong, as always - change it. Rich Farmbrough 23:59, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

The reference now in place does support a statement that the need to thread the rod over its entire length was the reason for requesting the change. However, I've not made any change, since the reference itself has no references, and it's a discussion of ethics in engineering and the important point is showing how a design decision can encourage dangerous decisions further down the line, not documenting exactly what happened in this case. Furthermore, the reference only says Havens thought the change would simplify the task, nothing about damage to the threads. In fact, reading the description in the NSB report shows that the remaining wording is probably wrong too, where it says the threads "would almost certainly have been damaged when the structure ... was hoisted". All that had to be hoisted up the rods was the cross-beam. The rest of the walkway was built in place later.

I don't agree with "they almost held double the expected load", though it's a low priority to fix. The NSB report makes it abundantly clear, many times, that even the original design was 40% short of meeting code.

Hmm. Lots of problems need correcting here. I may have to put them all off and come back another day ... anyone making changes to this article should read and understand the NSB report.

Paleolith (talk) 21:48, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Ah, let me correct myself. The reference does have a reference. But it's to yet another book on engineering ethics, not an investigation. Since the very detailed NSB report says nothing (that I can find) about the reason for the change, I still consider this "damage to the threads" thing basically undocumented.

Paleolith (talk) 21:55, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Hyatt Regency walkway collapse/Crediting Heroes

Among the heroic efforts the night of the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse were those of doctors attending a Radiology convention who happened to be dining at the hotel. As a secretary for the Radiology Film division of Eastman Kodak in Houston, Texas, I was on the phone constantly the morning after the tragedy. Sales reps from Eastman Kodak in Houston were attending the convention, showing doctors new film technology, and dining with them at the hotel that night. Because so many doctors were at the hotel, medical assistance began immediately to the victims. The efforts by the radiologists and the coordination of medical help by the Eastman Kodak sales representatives were integral to the survival of victims and treatment of those injured. The fact that many of the doctors and sales representatives had crossed the walkway moments earlier was a haunting reality.

I've added references to Dr. Joseph Waeckerle. He had been the director of Kansas City's emergency medical system two years earlier and his successor was not available, so he headed to the Hyatt after a run after a full shift at a hospital. K8 fan (talk) 22:46, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Link to German WP needs correction

I tried to update the link to German wikipedia, which now is http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt#Katastrophe_in_Kansas_City

but I didn't get there to the left hand column for editing. I am logged in but it seems I am not allowed to go there.

(if you like, leave me message how to do it) thanks, Andreas --Hundehalter (talk) 14:04, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

sorry for asking stupid questions. I was somewhat blind not see it :-/ --Hundehalter (talk) 17:03, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

"In Pop Culture" section

I've reverted the addition of the "In Pop Culture" section per WP:NOR. The link cited as a source allows you to watch the episode on imdb. NOR says, "Do not analyze, synthesize, interpret, or evaluate material found in a primary source yourself; instead, refer to reliable secondary sources that do so." As I understand it, keeping this material would require a reliable secondary source claiming "episode X parodies event Y". Kcowolf (talk) 00:02, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Hired?

I just read a July 1982 article in the Reader's Digest, and it contradicts this uncited bit:

Workmen from a local construction company were also hired by the city fire department, bringing with them cranes, bulldozers, jackhammers and concrete-cutting power saws.

From page 53, it says:

When it was clear that rescue equipment being stretched to the limit, construction companies and supply stores open their doors to provide rescuers with hydraulic jacks, acetylene torches, compressors and generators. "They said 'take what you want'" recalls Deputy Fire Chief Arnett Williams, who directed the department's operation that night. "I don't know if all those people got their equipment back. But no one has ever asked for an accounting and no one has ever submitted a bill."

Is the sentence describing the failure correct?

The sentence:

The connection failed and the fourth floor walkway collapsed onto the second floor and both walkways then fell to the lobby floor below, resulting in 111 immediate deaths and 216 injuries.

seems wrong to me based on the revised construction method that the article says was the cause of the failure (unless the second floor walkway exhibited cartoon physics and only fell when the fourth floor walkway landed on top of it at which point it finally realized nothing was holding it up so it then fell). The following text I found on the internet from a power point presentation seems correct (citing the website gets this edit rejected):

The second and fourth floor walkways fell to the atrium first floor with the fourth floor walkway coming to rest on top of the second floor walkway. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.37.244.156 (talk) 19:18, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Sorry it took so long for anyone to respond to your concerns. I've looked in to it and I believe the current i.e. original wording is correct.

If you look at the NBS report on the collapse, in chapter 4 it quotes two eyewitnesses saying that the fourth floor walkway fell on to the second floor walkway and they then both fell down to the atrium. One eye witness mentions the foruth floor walkway collapsing but doesn't say anything about the second floor walkway. Another mentions the second floor splitting in the middle and beginning to fall, it doesn't say anything about the fourth floor walkway which suggests this may have happened before the fourth floor fell on to it, but the eyewitness doesn't explicitly rule it out either. These were from news reports, as no effort was made by the investigators given the conflicting nature of the reports and the fact that they were more interested in the number of people on the walkway. There is apparently no video footage of the collapse, although there was a news camera crew on site, they were changing battery at the time of the collpase.

It's mentioned in the report that there is some ability to reconstruct the collapse based on the evidence, I've looked in to chapter 5 and 10 where this is happens and while I don't understand a lot of what it's saying, I don't see anywhere it disagrees with the eyewitness reports of the fourth collapsing on to the second. The most relevant part is probably where it says "The behavior of the second floor walkway during the collapse is much less clear, but it is believed to have generally followed the progression of failure in the fourth floor walkway".

One of the obvious things is probably that it didn't really matter to the investigators or more particularly, the report. I imagine they may have had a clear view of what happened re: the fourth floor walkway falling on to the second floor walkway, but didn't really describe it because it didn't really matter so much as the nitty gritty technical details surrounding the collapse of the fourth floor walkway and why it happened. If you understand the technical details of the report better, you may be able to work out from what they said what they believed happened.

You're of course right that if the second floor walkway was hanging off the fourth floor walkway, it makes no sense that the fourth floor walkway would have fallen on the second floor walkway.

I'm not an engineer but the complicating factor may be that this is only partially true. The load of the second floor walkway was supported by the fourth floor walkway, but the second floor walkway is also connected to the second floor and maybe in other ways I don't know. These aren't structural supports meaning that if the fourth floor walkway had magically disappeared, the second floor walkway would still have collapsed. But it may be possible for the fourth floor walkway to collapse on to the second floor walkway as although the second floor walkway may have begun to collapse, it may not follow that it has completely collapsed before the fourth floor walkway fell on to it.

In other words, not cartoon physics, but real life complicated physics with a multitude of factors which need to be taken in to account.

(Remember while the second floor walkway doesn't need to wait until the fourth floor walkway collapses on top of it for it to 'realise' it's no longer supported, if I understand the design correctly, it's likely the loss of support for the second floor primarily came when the fourth floor walkway started to actually fall. Of course since the supports would have been rigid not elastic, I presume they would have been forcing the second floor walkway down if they remain connected. Or in other words, the fourth floor would have been supported by the second floor which would seem to imply that the fourth floor walkway would not fall on the second floor walkway until they hit the ground. But I'm not sure how the failure here happened or even if I'm understanding the design properly so it may the fourth floor didn't actually have much of an impact on the second floor until it fell on to it beyond the loss of support at some stage.)

However given that eyewitness accounts are notorious unrealiable, so if you want, perhaps a compromise wording. Something like that used in the NBS report summary:

the second and fourth floor walkways fell to the atrium floor, with the fourth floor walkway coming to rest on top of the lower walkway

In other words, something which says they both fell to the atrium floor and that the fourth floor walkway came to a rest on the top of the second floor walkway without explicitly claiming that they both fell together. However please don't copy this directly, unless you are able to verify the source (which appears to be US Federal Government so it may be) is public domain and therefore without copyright issues and even then, you should make sure to properly acknowledge the source to avoid confusion. (In other words, it's probably easier to just reword the whole thing.)

BTW, I'm not sure and can't be bothered checking what source you were trying to use, but please note we require WP:RS which a Powerpoint presentation probably isn't. Also, bear in mind although I looked at the NSB report, we do generally prefer reliable secondary sources not primary ones, particularly when there is a risk we are intepreting the primary source rather than simply describing what it says.

Edit: It looks like the wording you were proposing is similar. Sorry, I got distracted by your comment on how it was impossible for the fourth floor walkway to fall on the second floor before the second floor had collapsed that I didn't notice your wording doesn't actually explicitly say that the walkways fell together.

Nil Einne (talk) 17:04, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

the next collapse

A recent edit (Aug 30), along with a later edit, had changed the last sentence of the intro paragraph, introducing colloquial wording ("came down") and inaccuracy. I have essentially reinstated the previous wording. The Aug 30 edit and a later one introduced Arlington and the Pentagon. Although part of the Pentagon collapsed, few if any of the deaths were due to the collapse, which occurred half an hour after the airplane hit, so that mention does not belong in a sentence about structural collapses with many deaths. I did add the clarification (in the link text) that it was the south tower collapse which exceeded the Hilton collapse in deaths. I was unable to determine how the 630 deaths in the south tower broke down between those in the building killed directly by the airplane crash and those who died a few minutes later in the building collapse (it does not include those on the airplane), and don't have a copy of Petroski's book, and so don't know the exact number killed by the actual collapse, but I thought the uncertainty slight. Paleolith (talk) 19:51, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

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Was there dancing on the walkways?

That is, was it poor design combined with heavy stress? Cool Nerd (talk) 19:20, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Pre-disaster photo

I would like to request that the article gets, if possible, a photo to show how the hotel looked before the disaster. I feel that this would greatly enhance readers' understanding of what has happened here. The current photos are informative anyway, but would be all the more useful when placed in the context of how it looked when it was all there. Any chance, please? Best wishes to all DBaK (talk) 21:32, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

The article claims that during the triaging after the collapse, mortally injured people were "told they were going to die" as they were given palliative morphine. This seems wildly implausible. It would be an act of extreme cruelty. Doctors are not generally so cruel to their patients. And just how many people would have been fatally injured, and yet conscious enough to comprehend this sadistic doctor telling them they were going to die?

So it's an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Two sources are given, one of which says something vaguely resembling the claim, and the other of which is a Google books page where the page of relevance is not part of the preview.

Without rock solid sourcing, the claim is dubious. And yet, there's an editor who seems desperate to keep it in. Perhaps they would like to explain why. 82.132.223.205 (talk) 20:21, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

I've always thought the statement was a bit bizarre myself, it's not any protocol I've ever heard of, and it should stay out unless it's supported by multiple independent sources. Acroterion (talk) 20:37, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

You have to look at the context. Your analysis is synthesizing your own point of view. Based on your definition, you don't think this event is extraordinary in its own regard? Part of the relief effort involved making the ground floor exhibition area as a makeshift morgue! The source states "Adequate resources were not available to treat everyone at once. The fatally injured were told they were going to die. This bothered some of the rescuers. The dying were given pain medication to ease their suffering." You could add to the context that this isn't a usual circumstance. They had to conserve the sources they had. Also, not being able to verify the source would call for a dubious tag and not edit warring. – The Grid (talk) 21:40, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

No, it's not a synthesis to question that claim. I'd really like to see multiple sources for the "told they were going to die" business - it is indeed an extraordinary claim that needs better sourcing. It's simply not a normal protocol in any circumstance, and should be treated with care - omission is the best course absent multiple concordant sources. There is no question about the rest - resources were indeed limited. Acroterion (talk) 21:50, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Yeah so the source kinda acknowledges that this is not fully normal response to an extremely abnormal amd desperate situation. We dont know who was available onsite to do this telling to the dying, but everything was makeshift and improvised. They utilized anything fonated from anywhere, ramming through the doors with vehicles and borrowing salvage equipment from an open request to the public. Anyway, the course of action is not to delete but to specify that the info is according to this one particular source so far. — Smuckola(talk) 23:00, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

I'll see if there's similar accounts but I have a feeling I'm going to venture into citogenesis. – The Grid (talk) 21:54, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

You're probably right. Acroterion (talk) 21:59, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Then I guess it's fine with the words omitted, I don't want to put a square peg in a round hole to put the words back as is. I still think it being reworded would help in the context. – The Grid (talk) 12:29, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

There's also a degree of BLP in play, since for the sake of surviving relatives of the victims, I'd want such a statement to be ironclad if it's included. Acroterion (talk) 15:15, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

• If someone wants to really dig into this point (and for general article development, actually) there's a good bibliography at http://www.kchistory.org/week-kansas-city-history/hotel-horror (though the "collection of newspaper clippings" link near the bottom, which I think would be the best lead to follow, is currently dead). EEng 13:55, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

Anybody interested in doing a proper freebody diagram for this?

Attempted free body diagram for the 1981 Hyatt disaster.

Consider this free body diagram a draft of a complete explanation. I think the one of the left is complete: The green arrows represent the force of gravity, mg, on each of the red floor structures. And the two upward green arrows at the top are something holding this all up. The red and black arrows are equal and opposite forces representing the interaction between each floor and the cable. On the right we have an extra cable, and two opposite forces (red and magenta) are shown that maintain the extra cable in equilibrium. This needs to be fixed in two ways: First some more forces need to be added. Second, we need to modify the labeling to make this accessible to color-blind readers.--Guy vandegrift (talk) 19:55, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Error in graphic

There seems to be an error in the graphic. The left half, labeled original design, shows the welds connecting the 2 C-section beams together as being on the top & bottom of the resulting box beam. But the text of the article (and the official investigation report, also) states that the original design had the box beam rotated 90 degrees, with the welds on the sides and the support rods and the nuts & washers through the solid center of the beam, rather than directly on the welds. This change was a secondary cause of the collapse; had it not been made, the failure might have been less catastrophic.

Could we get this graphic corrected? T bonham (talk) 06:09, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Surfside

Recommend writers get ready to modify this article's historical statements (i.e., "deadliest non-deliberate structural collapse") in light of the 2021 Miami Surfside disaster.

Deadliest since WTC collapse?

Wouldn't the collapse of the Alfred P. Murrah building in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing be deadlier? Seeing as both 9/11 and OKC were terror-related collapses. --Undescribed (talk) 20:10, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi, just pick one place to write to. I'll just repeat here for the record what I said on my Talk page, that OKC is a bombing and not a collapse. Either way, the lead section is only for summarizing the existing fully-sourced body contents WP:LEAD WP:RS and not for guessing things on a vitally technical mature subject. — Smuckola(talk) 20:27, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Full protection

Did we REALLY need to FULLY PROTECT this article? Why were we so quick to pull the fully protect button when extended confirmed lock or auto-confirmed lock would've been much better to use? I know it's an edit war but it's literally just mainly IPs (and it's not a BLP article), I don't see why a full protect is needed here. wizzito | say hello! 22:23, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

@Wizzito: No, we didn't; you're right. There was a bunch of news-and-gossip-scooping OR from a couple of accounts, but it was mostly IP. So I requested semi-protect but the admin did full anyway. The admin was also totally confused and thought it was somehow a content dispute, which it obviously absolutely is not as I explicitly said in the report. It is actually just anti-abuse. An editor that has a repeated process of deleting RS, and of micromanaging their own total failure of comprehension of basic policies in order to justify serial edit wars is obviously not a content dispute. So okay, full protection is tolerable (or whatever) during a time of controversial current events, if the admin hadn't also locked in the bunk abusive edit war, but the abuse edits will go away and another admin will set it to semi-protection later. — Smuckola(talk) 22:50, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

@Smuckola: I do agree with you. I do think that some level of protection is needed; apparently it's policy in a edit war to lock a page so both parties can't edit it? Still not too sure. wizzito | say hello! 22:56, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

@Wizzito: No, edit war does not require locking; it requires the warning of the perpetrator, in this case, the other person's one-sided edit war which was instead misidentified as a content dispute and as a two-party issue. The lock is coincidental to overall page abuse including that. But this was just a drive-by procedure, inexplicably locking in the abuse content and not properly warning the perpetrator. — Smuckola(talk) 23:14, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Disputants: I'm not going to see your objection unless you ping me. If you wish to substantiate these, that's fine. If you wish to address the content dispute (or point to where it had already been addressed), that's fine, too. But you're really not giving me much to work with here. Anyone who fails to address the dispute, itself, on the article talk page can be seen to have forfeited their position. Further reverts from such users will be met with sanctions. El_C 16:23, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

@El C: Sorry, I am just now seeing this message. Unfortunately it seems like another editor has continued to mischaracterize my edits as abuse, despite you calling it a content dispute and asking them to start a talk-page discussion, instead giving me a vandalism warning days later. (This would appear to be a pattern of not assuming good faith: The same editor seems to quickly assume vandalism, or to remove talk-page contributions that may be misguided but are an attempt to discuss the topic at hand.)

At any rate, I was simply trying to improve this article, and it felt like the inclusion of the newspaper's prize-winning coverage didn't make sense at the top as something that "afflicted" the city. Though the New York Times article that this is drawn from says "When the two newspapers were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for excellence in local reporting on the Hyatt disaster, they were cited for working in the face of strong community opposition" (vs. the Wikipedia article's "putting the newspaper at odds with the Kansas City community in general, including the management of Hallmark Cards, the parent company of the hotel's owner"), that citation does not exist on the Pulitzer website, making it hard to know exactly what was said. But that sentence in the NYT comes several paragraphs after "After the disaster, two of the city's most respected institutions, Hallmark Cards and the company that publishes the city's two major newspapers, found themselves in bitterly opposing camps for the first time" — with no intervening mention of any other opposition to the newspapers — making it reasonable to assume that the "strong community opposition" refers to Hallmark, which is exactly who a reasonable person would expect to be upset about an investigation into Hallmark.

As previously written, the Wikipedia article made it sound almost like the prize-winning journalism was bad for the community, but it's likely that any discord was simply between the journalists and the target(s) of their investigation. 173.175.200.238 (talk) 19:04, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

IP, I joined Wikipedia in 2004 and became an admin in 2005, and it is alarming to me the disdain with which you've been treated, by multiple users. I, and later two other uninvolved admins, have firmly rebuked these attempts to shut you out, just for being an IP (see my comments at User_talk:El_C#Hyatt_Regency_walkway_collapse for the first rebuked attempt and scroll to the bottom of Wikipedia:Requests_for_page_protection/Archive/2021/07#23_July_2021 for the second one). If anyone tries to intimidate you again, please do not hesitate to contact me personally on my talk page (here), as that would be a cause for sanctions. El_C 19:18, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Casualty count

Are there any sources that explain the difference in reported injuries? For example, ThinkReliability reports 216 injured and the NIST document reports 186. 202.18.108.111 (talk) 08:31, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Potentially inaccurate claim about weld position

The serious flaws of the revised design were compounded by the fact that both designs placed the bolts directly through a welded joint connecting two C-channels, the weakest structural point in the box beams. The original design was for the welds to be on the sides of the box beams, rather than on the top and bottom

— rev 871146565

I can't seem to find any reference to this in the NBS report after searching trough every occurrence of "weld" and "box beam", and there is no citation.

~ zncr ~ (talk) 19:57, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't see any evidence that the box beams were supposed to be fabricated with the welds in the sides either, so I've removed that.

I don't think assertion that the weld is the the weakest point is wrong, but it would be nice to have a reference that explicitly says so. I will look around. Acroterion (talk)