Today is the 42nd anniversary of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency walkway collapse

I’ve seen a lot of analysis of the disaster on architectural engineering TikTok.

I was a teenager in KC area when it happened and remember it well. According to the news reports and first hands it was simply horrible. That was back in era when Hyatt was trying to make their lobbies and structures very unusual in design and style. As much as people like to bitch about 'government overreach' this is why building standards, codes and practices must be heavily regulated and monitored.

Biggest thing that ever happened to Kansas City.

I was a little kid when this happened. We lost family friends and my uncle spent considerable time in the hospital recovering.

R4 names?

Alot of tragedy for many many families.

Terrifying.

Welcome to datalounge, Sean Taylor. Who delivers a well deserved Oh, Dear on the linked article.

Sean Taylor 3 days ago · 1 Like

"At approximately 7:05 p.m., the second-level walkway, holding about 40 people, experienced a loud crack before dropping several inches and then falling completely onto the second-floor walkway. "

Perhaps an edit is in order. This sentence isn't clear. It sounds like the second-floor walkway collapsed on itself. I'm pretty sure it was the fourth-floor walkway that collapsed on the second.

I just now realized the massive pond of blood at the bottom right of OP's photo. Damn, how horrific.

Anybody notice that on Datalounge, there's ALWAYS that person with a first-person link to whatever's being discussed, no matter how foreign or historic or rare?? "I worked with her briefly", or "My friend worked with them for years" or "My family was there/had family there".

It's crazy how that is, right?

And just think - if it happened today, we'd have countless first-hand videos of the disaster posted to YT within minutes.

There was a gay couple killed in the disaster. They could have been DLers had they lived.😪

America has been in decline for decades

This is why there are regulatory codes for buildings. Unapproved changes in designs, using substandard construction quality support products, and shoddy workmanship , and lack of proper oversight, all contributed to the deaths of over 100 people that day.

When I at the University of Kansas in Lawrence in the 80s one of my best friends’ boyfriend’s mother was decapitated in that Hyatt event. Always kind of weirded me out hearing that.

This tragic incident feels ripe for a Ryan Murphy limited series.

I was 8 when this happened. I remember snuggling on the couch with my grandmother in Overland Park, watching with terror as the news unfolded. It was so nightmarish to me. I had been in that lobby before, and I was freaking myself out thinking "what if this had happened when I was there, and I was smooshed?" Just horrifying. I'm so sorry, R4, for your family's losses. R15 - OH MY GODDDD!!!!! Nightmare fuel.

Can I also just say, R15, that Lawrence in the 80s was THE SHIT!!! So many good bands came through. I went to college in Columbia MO in the early 90s and I remember still driving to Lawrence from time to time to catch a show that either bypassed us, or to catch a show AGAIN that had just come through. From REM to Ministry to Fishbone to you name it. The 80s and 90s were the coolest decades to be a high school or college student in all of human history, IMHO. Do you have a similar fondness? Did you have fun?

Can’t believe I never knew about this😳

R9 That's what the sidewalk looked like after the Boston Marathon bombing.

R18: I was at those Fishbone shows around ‘87 so we were probably in the same room! It was some trashy place out in the country, can’t remember the name of that venue. I was in Lawrence from ‘85 to ‘89, there was nothing like it! Some great memories for me.

I remember it well. Those fancy new Hyatt Regencys with large atrium lobbies were popping up in mid-sized cities all across the country. I was from Indy which had one too that had opened just a few years earlier.

At that time, ABC's 20/20 was the place to go for in-depth reporting about current events. They ran a very chilling dramatic piece about the mishap (see link) the following Thursday (yes 20/20 was on Thursday nights back then).

Hugh Downs called the event a 'tea dance'. I thought by 1980 only gays were calling their events tea dances (Fire Island, Ft. Lauderdale)

Awwww! Nostalgia intoxication overload right now! Yes we were certainly in the same room! Dying to hear your stories!! People from the coasts would be surprised to realize, between St. Louis, Columbia, KC and Lawrence, what a breathtakingly cinematic college experience we had. All the bands, and all of the tropes of 80s/90s youth culture. Absolutely batshit midwestern punk scene. SO. MUCH. FUN.

Ok, back to the horrific tragedy. Love youuuuuuuuu, R21.

ps Wasn't it the Bottleneck, R21? The club?

R23: oh the things I could tell you. I fell into the crowd that hung around the writer William S. Burroughs, who lived in Lawrence at the time. Those years were like a dream, and happy that I moved out of and beyond KU because Lawrence had a way of weaving a web that was hard to escape, I haven’t been there in over 30 years and someday I’m going to take my husband there for a pilgrimage.

R17 - You still here? I went to school in Columbia, MO also, early 90s. Around the time Bush 1 was elected. Mizzouuuui!!

And then Timothy Mcveigh hit the city not that many years later

^That was Oklahoma City.

Which was worse this or 9/11?

I was graduated from Mizzou in 1983. None one I knew watched TV at the time. When this tragedy happened, everyone on campus was glued to someone's TV. I watched on a portable black and white TV, with rabbit ears, with about 25 other people in someone's dorm room.

There was a big TV at Brady Commons, and hundreds watched it there.

R26 Hi I'm back! I was at Mizzou from 1991-1995. Did you ever go to Shattered???

The indie band, Start , from Lawrence, Kansas, released an excellent album, Look Around in 1983 , which included a song written by Allen Ginsberg. Too bad they didn't make more music. One of my favorite releases from that period.

R30 I used to work at the bookstore in the Commons! I remember even when I was there ten years after you, they still had a smoking section in Brady. Wow...feeling old now. Nice to meet a fellow Tiger :-)

I feel sorry for those of you who had to live in Kansas or Missouri.

R26? Did you ever catch the KC band The Coctails at the Blue Note during our time there? I was friends, and for a time roommates, with the brother of the bass player. It was a whole thang for awhile.

Their third brother worked in film. I remember my friend telling me one evening, very excitedly, that his brother was slated to start working on a movie about the Titanic disaster, and that it was going to be the biggest budget of any film in the history of film. Like a billion dollars or something. I remember not fully believing him. It sounded greatly exaggerated.

Boy, was I wrong!

Why do I think this thread might have been started by the MIllennium Partners?

R17/31 - Shattered!! It was the first gay bar I ever went into. I was kinda a late bloomer. Although I discovered the men’s rooms in the basement of Jesse Hall! I wrote for the Maneater, was in the SGA and was Mizzou’s representative to the US Student Government Association annual convention, in Berkeley, CA the year I went.

I remember the bookstore at Brady Commons, R30. It amazed me when the employees who bought back books were able to put their finger in a stack of dollar bills, and they would pull out the exact amount correctly.

My friends and I would get up at 7:00am on Saturday mornings and go to the bowling alley on the bottom floor. You could bowl as many games as you wanted until Noon for one dollar. I never get up at 7:00am on a Saturday anymore. We had a budget back then. More bang for the buck.