Hyatt Regency Walkway Design Analysis

The Hyatt Regency Walkway was an engineering design that was made in a hotel in Kansas.

The construction began in spring of 1978. Then the Eldridge Construction Company entered a subcontract with the company of Havens Steel in which they had agreed to fabricate and erect the atrium steel for the Hyatt project. There were events and communications between both companies about determining to change the design from a single to a double hanger rod box beam connection for use on the fourth floor walkway. Then there was a setback because on October 14, 1979, part of the atrium roof collapsed while the hotel was still in construction. They started an investigation of what caused the roof to collapse. Then into November there were reports and meetings between the owner and the architect assuring that the entire atrium was Safe. In July of 1980, the construction was completed and the Kansas City Regency Hotel opened.

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Introduction

On July 17, 1981, the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City  held a videotaped dance party in their atrium lobby. With many party-goers standing and dancing on the suspended walkways, connections supporting the ceiling rods that held up the second and fourth floor walkways across the atrium failed, and both walkways collapsed onto the crowded first floor atrium below.

Background

In 19760, the Crown Center Redevelopment Corporation started a project to design and also build the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City. There were some companies that were called to help with this project. One of them was the Gillum Colaco, which  had agreed to provide all the services for the Hyatt project. Then on April 4, they entered the real contract in.The G.C.E. were responsible for the drawings for the project. The walkways were not designed right because they were all connected to the 4th floor walkway.

Investigation

They went to the company that was responsible for the design and saw that they didn’t support the rods well, that’s why the walkways collapsed into the center of the dance were 114 people died and 216 people got injured. They then figured out what to do with the designer.

Findings and recommendations

References

ENGINEERING.com. “Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse ENGINEERING.com.” Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse ENGINEERING.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Dec. 2016.

 It was a vertically contiguous walkway that collapsed onto the tea dance that was in the hotel lobby.

The walkway killed about 114 and injured 216, at that time that was the deadliest structural collapse in U.S history before the collapse of the World Trade Center towers.

Background:

The construction for the 40 story building began in May 1978. There were delays and setbacks including an incident that happened on October 14, 1979 when a 2,700 square foot of the atrium roof collapsed due to the failure of one of the connections at its northern end, the hotel still was officially opened on July 1,1980.

The building was constructed to one of the walkways that had to also hold the weight of two others which in that case when 1,600 people gathered in the atrium to participate in and watch the tea dance and when there was 40 people on the second level walkway and more on the third and also with like 16 to 20 on the fourth level where they watched the activities that were going on below in the lobby. The construction difficulties resulted in a subtle but flawed design change that doubled the load on the connection between the fourth floor walkway that supported beams and the tie rods carrying the weight of both walkways which the design could barely adequately support the dead load weight of the structure itself. With the weight of the spectators the connection failed and the fourth floor walkway collapsed onto the second floor walkway then both fell unto the lobby killing 111 and injuring 219, but later on 3 more passed away in the hospital.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_Regency_walkway_collapse

On july 17,1981 the Hyatt Regency hotel held a videotaped tea dance party.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czmQS81k9eM

There was a crew of reporters there to record the dance. They recorded the walkways and showed all the people dancing and others at a bar area because there were 4 different bar sections. Later on around 7:00, they had to change the battery and while they were changing the battery the walkways then collapsed onto the lobby and there was silence for like a moment then all of a sudden there were people screaming and yelling for help. The reporters then turned on again the camera and recorded after the walkways had collapsed.

Due to evidence supplied at the Hearings, a number of principals involved lost their engineering licenses, a number of firms went bankrupt, and many expensive legal suits were settled out of court

Rubric rating submitted on: 12/21/2016, 12:43:50 PM by stephanie.russell@bryanisd.org