Question

please read the article in online 'Understanding the Tragic Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse' and explain what other design faults that had occurred resulting to higher risks and safety hazards to the guests and victims. Should be more than 300 words.

Answer 1

Solution:

The Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse │Ultimate Disaster of Negligence

Flashback:

The Hyatt Regency Walkway collapse on 1981 July 17^th was one the deadliest structural collapse in the history of the United States of America until the WTC attack in 2001. More than 100 people lost their lives and another 200 plus are seriously injured in the multiple walkway collapse within the hotel.

Brief building description:

The Hyatt Regency Kansas City Hotel is an iconic hotel with outlining features like the lobby and included a multi-story atrium traversed by elevated walkways that suspended from ceilings which connect second, third, fourth floors from North side of the building to south side suspended from ceilings These 37m long walkways are made up of steel, glass, concrete weighing it around 29,000 kg.

Negligence’s first spark:

During the construction stage, some people detected a design flaw and the contractors decided to change the design without properly consulting or getting verbal consent from the designers through a telephone call. This resulted in the double loading in the connection of the fourth-floor bridge and the atrium roof. Initially, it was designed in such a way that each hanger rod was to be continuous from the second-floor walkway which passes through the fourth-floor and to the hanger rod bracket attached to the atrium roof.

Each hanger rod has a design transfer load of 90 kN (Figure 1A) So that the supporting nut would have taken the actual load. In the real case, they used two hanger rods one from the atrium roof to the fourth-floor bridge and another from second-floor bridge to fourth-floor bridge with an offset of 4 inches (102 mm) (Figure 1B) resulting Two times load acting on the nut (181 kN) that connects the fourth-floor bridge with the second-floor bridge.

The design was already imperfect along with that the second-floor’s walkway dead weight added to the fourth floor which increases the frequency of failure.

Other design faults:

Improper design of the Sprinkler system: Due to the collapse of the second and fourth-floor bridges the sprinkler systems got damaged and water gushed into the atrium. Sprinkler system was designed in such a way that water was supplied directly from tanks rather than a common city supply. This results in the uncontrolled flow of water into the atrium floor which may result in trapped victims being drowned.

Improper design of emergency exits: It has been observed that the front doors of the hotel were acting like a dam which results in quick flooding inside the building.

Improper ventilation system: A large amount of airborne dust particles seriously affected the rescue operation. Since the whole building was designed for closed format active ventilation systems failed due to the emergency cut of power supplies. No passive ventilation was available for the hotel that results in circulating dust particles during the panic and it took too much time to settle down.

The Fallout:

The engineers and firms responsible for this disaster have their licenses revoked. Around $140 million dollars awarded for the victims through compensation claims from courts. American Society of Civil Engineering adopted a report states that the structural engineers have full responsibility in any design-related problems in design projects.