Kansas
City is famous for many things: barbecue, the Nelson Art Gallery, the Royals
baseball team, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Country Club Plaza, and Crown
Center. It’s also remembered for not-so
pleasant people and events like Tom Pendergast, the Union Station Massacre,
mobster Nick Civella, and the Hayatt Walkway Collapse of 1981 when 114 people
were killed at that newly opened hotel.
I’m surprised more people don’t remember the tragedy because it made the
national and internal news. Even more
surprising is the mystery of how it happened and why, I believe, it was allowed
to happen.
I
was working in downtown Kansas City at the time. The day before the collapse a co-worker and I
took our lunch break to see this newly constructed marvel, the Hayatt, which
was like Crown Center a jewel in KC’s drab concrete and steel skyline. (Henry Ford did the same urban renewal in Detroit
with his version – the Renaissance Center.) My
recollection is of a first class structure with an interesting tier of catwalks
above an expanse used for social gatherings called Friday Night Teas. It was a place for singles to mix. What interested me especially were the
catwalks because I’d never seen anything like them. Leonard and I couldn’t help venturing out
onto the center one just far enough for it to start swaying with just us two on
it. I remember my exact words, “I’m
getting off this thing!” I felt it could
have collapsed with just us two on it.
When
one catwalk pancaked on another and sent the whole thing down everyone asked,
“How could such a thing happen?” It was a brand new building. Overcrowding was a factor, yet my maintenance
co-workers and I knew more. Hanging
catwalks are like anything else you hang in a building: AC duct work, plumbing
pipes, and electrical cables. There is a
threaded suspension rod called Redi-Bolt that receives washers and nuts. The bolt hangs from a “channel” (similar in
function to the one above your overhead garage door) or a steel frame. Our conclusion was that a cheap nut or
washer was used; there are different grades of steel. I speculated that Fender Washers might have
been used to conveniently join bolts to channel. They are unusually wide, but thin.
Since
1981 catwalks, especially those between buildings, are a standard feature of Kansas City and America’s urban
terrain. They allow down-town shoppers
and the big shots to avoid the streets, crime, and homeless encounters. Similar collapses have not occurred, so
architects and builders must have learned something from the terrible
event. To me there is still a
mystery. Others will say, “It was due to
all those people who were on it.” Then
why did it sway with just two on it?
More than that, those who built it must have noticed the same
thing. What about the construction crews
or the building inspectors? Weren’t they also shocked enough to say, “I’m
getting off this thing!”?
