Monday, Jul. 27, 1981
The Night the Sky Bridges Fell
By Kurt Anderson
More than 100 die as tragedy strikes a hotel in Kansas City
"It started," said one horrified eyewitness, "with a small snapping sound." Then the noise mounted, first seeming like a wrecking ball thudding against the sleek new building, and then like an explosion lashing through the crowded lobby. When the hideous din subsided, replaced by the muted cries of the injured and terrified, the carnage was staggering: 108 people lay dead in the atrium of the sleek, 40-story Hyatt Regency Hotel. More than 180 were injured, and at least three more died later. Some victims were pinned for hours beneath the tons of steel, cement and cables. Said Mayor Richard Berkley: "It was the worst disaster in the history of Kansas City."
Two 145-ft.-long interior walkways--one four stories off the ground, the other two--had come ripping down amid a crowd of 1,500 dancers. As the debris cascaded to the floor, broken glass flew like shrapnel. Nor did the chaos end with the horrifying collapse. Water from broken pipes gushed out over the bodies and rubble, and the smell of escaping natural gas wafted through the vaulting half-acre hotel lobby, adding to the fears of fire and explosion. "People kept screaming names, all sorts of names, trying to find a friend or a wife or a son," recounted Kansas City Star Sportswriter Mike McKenzie.
Within minutes an enormous rescue crew had assembled: 250 policemen, 250 firemen and hundreds of paramedics. With blowtorches, chain saws and jackhammers they struggled to peel away the twisted beams and cement boulders. They worked 13 feverish hours to free the injured and retrieve the dead. Said Doug Klote, an ambulance company official: "Death and mutilation are nothing new to me. But this is the worst."
By late afternoon, a mostly middle-aged and middle-class throng had converged on the Hyatt's expansive lobby for another in a popular new series of weekly dances. Admittance required only a fondness for the fox trot. "Tea dances," the promoters were billing these mildly recherche gatherings: Tommy Dorsey and Duke Ellington tunes were featured, and Friday's Big Band, Steve Miller and His Orchestra, had played the occasions before. The hotel has a ballroom, but the glassy lobby is nearly as large and, in the fading summer light, far more inspiring.
The Hyatt's dramatic five-story atrium lobby was transected by three walkways. The atrium has become an architectural signature of the Hyatt chain. In the $50 million Kansas City structure, the top and bottom sky bridges ran parallel to each other, two floors apart, protruding about ten feet from the west wall of the lobby. A third, middle bridge, 15 feet farther from the wall, did not collapse.
A hundred people lingered on the lowest walkway, and 50 more chatted and watched the festivities from the highest span. The band was playing Satin Doll. At 7:01, the middle section of the top span simply gave way, and a moment later, the end sections fell free as well. Said a witness, Richard Howard: "You could watch people grab hold of the walkway. Then they just flew all over." Ann Dunford came within a hairbreadth of tumbling into the chasm. "I had one foot on the skyway," she said, "and I don't know if I felt it or heard it give. I stepped back and could see the middle going down." Hospital Administrator Tom Edgarton was in a restaurant just off one of the lobby mezzanines. Looking out toward the atrium, he saw "debris just pouring up like a bomb had gone off."
It was cruel enough that the collapse occurred when the lobby was at its most crowded. But even more people died because the lobby's makeshift ballroom and the main exits happened to be directly beneath the plummeting walkways. Said Betty Webb: "The first thing I knew I was on the bottom and some girl was on top of me. We were just piled up helter-skelter and the structure was on top of us." A chunk of walkway came thudding down a few feet from Tea Dance Veteran Julie Halford. "The impact threw me against a concrete railing," she said. The entire crash sequence took only 15 seconds. Edgarton, above the lobby and off to one side, had his back turned when the bridges crashed. Instead of seeing the havoc, he saw the startled expressions of the witnesses. Said he: "People hid their faces and turned away."
The enormity of the accident required commensurate manpower and machines. Within minutes the first of 25 ambulances used during the night was loading crushed and bloody survivors. A helicopter made twelve trips evacuating the most gravely injured. Scores of casualties were laid out, field-hospital fashion, outside the hotel. Bystanders worked hand in hand with policemen, fire fighters and doctors, about 1,000 rescuers in all. Cheers rose each time they found a survivor. Two construction cranes were brought to the scene; their booms poked through the arching lobby windows to lift away the most massive pieces of wreckage. A bulldozer was brought in as well. At one point, an amputation was performed in the lobby: doctors could free one trapped man only by cutting off his leg. On Saturday morning, with the hotel exhibition hall serving as a morgue, the fingerprinting of corpses was under way. Puddles of bloody water covered the lobby floor. Ten survivors were trapped until 6 a.m. The last slab was lifted at 7:45 a.m. Beneath it were 31 bodies.
The Illinois-based Hyatt Corp. rushed officials to the scene Saturday. But the hotel, the city's newest, really belongs to Kansas City: it was designed by local architects, by local firms, and is owned by the family-run Hallmark Cards, Inc., one of the city's largest employers. Said Company President Donald Hall: "The past hours have been the darkest in my life." The city council met Saturday to review the disaster. No one was ready to place blame--indeed, it was not yet known why the sky bridge gave way. Said a Hyatt vice president, James Howard, in a careful letter to the mayor and Missouri Governor Christopher ("Kit") Bond: "We do not know the cause of the tragedy. However, we do know that the structural integrity and safety of the building had been assured by the architects, the contractor, and in subsequent building Somewhere, the assurance flawed.
--By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Steven Holmes and Rick Lyman/Kansas City
With reporting by Steven Holmes, Rick Lyman
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