Failures are often associated with structural problems, either in the design or the construction materials used.
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The newly constructed Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, featured several suspended walkways crossing its multistory atrium. Preliminary plans called for the fourth-floor walkway to hang from the ceiling, connected by steel rods. On July 17, 1981, the hotel was crowded for an event. The linked walkways crashed to the dancefloor, killing 114 people and injuring another 200. The structural engineer in charge of the walkways blamed the design flaw on a breakdown in communication. The Hyatt Regency walkway collapse has become a popular case study in the ethics of engineering. |
In that design, the rods would barely hold the weight of the walkway itself and would not have passed local building codes. Those supports were included in the final construction, and to make matters worse, the second-floor walkway was suspended from the fourth-floor walkway directly above it, doubling the load on those parts.
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