The Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror

My dad owns a drywall company and builds huge skyscrapers all over California and I can tell you the biggest issue is that whoever wants the building built, always wants it rushed. DONT. RUSH. IT.

The fact that local construction workers immediately rushed to the area with their equipment is truly remarkable

My father was killed in the collapse , my mother was injured and survived. My mother wanted to see the building torn down and never could look at it when driving by. She was one of the lucky ones, but suffered the aftermath for the rest of her years. She lived to be 96.

"Almost every safety precaution we have are written by blood" -Ryan Bregara

I remember seeing a metaphor somewhere that explained the scope of this engineering mistake. Imagine you and a friend are dangling from the same rope, you holding a knot halfway up and your friend holding a knot on the bottom. All the weight is taken by the rope, and both people are only holding their own weight. Now replace the one rope with two ropes: one attached to the ceiling you're holding on to, and one attached to you that your friend is holding on to. Your friend is in the same position, but you are now holding your friend's weight in addition to your own, and stretched between the two ropes. Of course the real thing is a bit more complex, but this helped me understand the basics of the problem much better.

I remember watching the news cover this shortly after it happened. As I recall, a football star was one of the people attending the party. When he was interviewed during the aftermath, he kept talking about how, for all his strength, he couldn't do a thing to rescue the injured, the debris was just too heavy. It was clear that he was devastated by having to stand by helplessly as people buried in the rubble screamed for help. What a nightmare.

I like this narrator. He has a very calm way of telling us terrible stories without distressing us further by shouting and using dramatic music

I was on my way into there that evening for dinner, as my girlfriend was working at the restaurant on the terrace. As I approached the building, folks with bloody clothes were streaming out, saying that they'd thought that a bomb had gone off. I watch this video and it brings back a lot of sadness, memories which I thought that I had forgotten, and have justly wanted to forget.

They covered this one in an engineering class I took; I'm still shocked at the negligence involved in one seemingly harmless decision. This is why designers and construction crew need to all be on the same page :/

This definitely qualifies as horrifying. Holy hell.

It's truly incredible that someone actually took responsibility . . . and even spoke of his own incompetence for years to come, inviting endless shame in an attempt to prevent further loss of life. Maybe not the best engineer, but certainly a good person.

It is interesting that NASA uses this as a case study, while Construction Risk Management uses The Challenger tragedy as its case study.

The horrifying part is that these lessons always seem to be learned at the expense of numerous lives. Nobody seems to care until a large body count is involved.

At least the guy was remorseful and taught people to prevent disasters like the one his company caused. It’s not often that people can accept their wrong doings and actively prevent other tragedies. EDIT: HOLY- I was not expecting this at all! Thanks for the kindness everyone.

A former boss I had was there when this collapsed. He had just stepped off the skywalk and was about 10 feet away when it fell away. He said if he had lingered just 2 to 3 seconds more on the walk he would have fell with it. A good friend of mine had parents that lived in Kansas City. The parents were friends with another couple that happened to be at the dance. The husband realized that the skywalk was collapsing as they were dancing out on the floor and shoved his wife with all his might out of the way. She broke both of her legs but, sadly, her husband perished under fallen rubble.

There was actually a local news crew there videotaping the dance. By sheer coincidence they exited the dance floor and went into another area to change videotapes when the walkways collapsed..

me: where is the emergency exit in this building? we sure it's safe? mother: why are you so paranoid?! me: fascinating horror flashbacks

Why does it seem safety regulations are written in blood from horrible mistakes of the past.

I met a female architect whose family was sitting there underneath the walkways when the event happened. She lost her entire family before her eyes. When I met her she was just getting over the event some decades later. She and I both had PTSD and that is how we met

My uncle was a police officer at the time who responded. He refused to talk about it other than saying how much blood there was. The vibe of the place feels off every time I visit.