Why did the Hyatt collapse?

Many party-goers had been standing on the walkways when the disaster occurred. The collapse was caused by the failure of connections supporting the fourth-floor walkway ceiling rods. This walkway crashed onto the second-floor walkway directly beneath, which in its turn fell to the floor of the lobby.



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As an investigation in the aftermath showed, even if the original design had been implemented, the walkway would not have been able to hold the expected load, thereby failing to meet the requirements of the Kansas City Building Code. Checking the calculations at the design stage could have prevented this disaster.

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On December 31, 2004, substantially all of the hospitality assets owned by Pritzker family business interests, including Hyatt Corporation and Hyatt International Corporation, were consolidated under a single entity, now Hyatt Hotels Corporation.

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The Hyatt Regency collapse remains the deadliest non-deliberate structural failure in American history, and it was the deadliest structural collapse in the U.S. until the collapse of the World Trade Center towers 20 years later.

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Expand All. On July 17, 1981, during a Friday night “tea dance” at the year-old Hyatt Regency, skywalks in the spacious lobby pulled from their moorings and collapsed, crushing the people below. All told, 114 were killed and more than 200 injured.

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