Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Ryan Reynolds here from Int Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down.
So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile Unlimited Premium Wireless. How did you get 30, 30, how did you get 30, how did you get 20, 20, 20, how did you get 20, 20, how did you get 15, 15, 15, 15, just 15 bucks a month? Sold! Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes each detail.
The land down under has never been easier to reach. United Airlines has more flights between the U.S. and Australia than any other U.S. airline, so you can fly nonstop to destinations like Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Explore dazzling cities, savor the very best of Aussie cuisine, and get up close and personal with the wildlife. Who doesn't want to hold a koala? Go to united.com slash Australia to book your adventure.
This episode of Swindled may contain graphic descriptions or audio recordings of disturbing events which may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. It was Sunday morning around 3 a.m. when 18-year-old FIU freshman Alexis Dale was struck and killed while using the crosswalk at Southwest 8th Street and 109th Avenue. For many students, crossing 8th Street is the main way they get to and from campus.
An 18-year-old information technology student at Florida International University in Miami was struck by a car and killed the day before the fall semester began in 2017. Alexis Dane was trying to cross the eight lanes of traffic on Southwest 8th Street that separates the school from the off-campus student housing in suburban Sweetwater. For pedestrians, it was a notoriously dangerous stretch of road.
4,000 FIU students make that treacherous voyage up to five times a day, every day. Yeah, there were shuttles to class, but the waits were long, and the service stopped at sundown. Sometimes they had no choice but to risk their lives at that crosswalk.
"This tragedy reminds us how precious and fragile life is," Florida International University said in a statement. The school later confirmed that there were already plans to build a pedestrian bridge across Southwest 8th Street. Using the $19.4 million in grant money it received from the U.S. Department of Transportation in 2013, FIU said the bridge project had broken ground a year earlier and was about another year from completion.
It was the perfect opportunity for the school to showcase its expertise. Florida International University is home to the federally funded Accelerated Bridge Construction University Transportation Center. Students from around the world would go there to learn how to build a bridge rapidly off-site and then install it quickly. These pioneering methods taught at FIU streamlined the bridge building process, allowing quicker and more cost-efficient construction without sacrificing quality.
The FIU pedestrian bridge would be a shining example of these techniques. The 320-foot-long bridge would cross Southwest 8th Street at the 109th Avenue intersection. The 30-foot-wide walking deck would feature plazas with benches and tables, event spaces, and Wi-Fi service. It would be able to withstand a Category 5 hurricane and, barring a major disaster, should be serviceable for more than 100 years.
The total projected cost of the bridge was $14.2 million. That's actually the formwork for what will span over for what will be the bridge, essentially. In the middle, where we see that crane over there, that's where the middle column will go to the bridge. And ultimately, on this end, is where the landing to Sweetwater will reside.
Visually, the FIU pedestrian bridge would look like a suspension bridge, like the Golden Gate Bridge, with cables supporting the deck's weight. But in this case, the wires were just for aesthetic purposes. Structurally, the FIU bridge would be a truss bridge, more like the Key Bridge in Baltimore, with its series of steel triangles and straight members connecting at the nodes.
However, those triangular trusses on FIU's bridge would be made of concrete, a rare choice for that type of structure, but they hoped it would be easier to shape and maintain. And if all goes according to plan, they hope to have the bridge complete by December of 2018. The FIU pedestrian bridge was designed by Figg Bridge Engineers in Tallahassee. The school itself would oversee the development. Typically, Florida's Department of Transportation would be much more involved.
Munilla Construction Management Miami was contracted to do the actual building, and it was coming along. On the first day of spring break, March 10th, 2018, the bridge's main section, which had been assembled on the side of the road, was ready to be installed above the street. It took about six hours to position the 174-foot, 950-ton section into place. Crowds gathered to watch and celebrate.
One student told the school newspaper that the new pedestrian bridge was a blessing. The mayor of Sweetwater said it was symbolic of the growth of the region and its partnership with FIU.
Florida International University President Mark Rosenberg said the project communicated very concretely that, quote, nothing is going to stand in our way of promoting our students' safety and security, and nothing is going to stand in our way of progress. This new bridge is critical for student safety. We're thrilled that they can now have a much safer passage. Less than a week later, FIU's new pedestrian bridge would result in tragedy.
19-year-old Richard Humble woke up with a terrible fever on Thursday, March 15, 2018. He asked 18-year-old freshman Alexa Duran, a political science major at FIU, if she could take him to the doctor. "Of course, my horse," Alexa told Richard, a typical response between the best friends. On the way home, Richard Humble says he and Alexa discussed which movie they should see when he felt better.
He said Alexa stopped her grey Toyota SUV at the red light on Southwest 8th Street and 109th Avenue where the new bridge was being built. It was 1:47 PM. He heard a crack from above. "Alexa!" Richard screamed in the split second before the collapsing bridge flattened her car. "Alexa!" he cried again. While trapped inside the mangled machine, he could see her hair but could not maneuver through the wreckage to reach her.
Richard uttered Alexa's name over and over again, but she never responded. I looked back at Alexa a couple of times and
A witness who saw the bridge collapse told WSVN that it sounded like a bomb, like multiple bombs in one. It sounded like the world was ending. And when you look back, all you see is the bridge on the floor.
It was awful. The bridge collapsed and it started from the left side of the bridge and it really shocked me because all of those people under the bridge, they're all dead. They're all dead because the cars are smashed. There are no words to be able to articulate or any type. This is completely unfathomable.
And I'm nauseated. It's completely and utterly unacceptable. I gotta confirm at least four cars under this bridge. Three, four are going to be unattainable at this time.
Sergeant Jenna Mendez of the Sweetwater Police saw the bridge collapse while stopped at a red light one intersection away. She rushed to the scene and found multiple construction workers atop the pile. One of them, 37-year-old Navarro Brown, wasn't breathing.
Sergeant Mendez performed CPR while screaming instructions to bystanders over the incessant malfunctioning car horns squawking from the rubble. Our teams are still in rescue and search mode. They're still working the debris pile. We have search dogs in place. We have technical listening devices and fiber optics. We're drilling holes into the pile to try to locate any viable patients. More than 100 firefighters, police officers, and paramedics arrived at the scene.
They were assisted by passers-by, medical students, and university doctors. Step one was to remove live people from the wreckage. 19-year-old Richard Humble was one of the first ones to be freed. He had neck and back injuries but immediately picked up his phone and called his mother to tell her what happened to Alexa. Richard was eventually taken to the hospital along with nine others. Injuries ranged from bruising and broken bones to comas and cardiac arrest.
At 5:45 p.m., cranes arrived to help retrieve those still trapped. We have all of the heavy equipment we might need. We have as many as four cranes and crane operators. So we're in a full search and rescue mode. As Friday evening approached, that rescue turned into a recovery. There was little hope for anyone who remained under the bridge. There were no signs of life. They had almost certainly been crushed instantly.
Alexa Durand's body was retrieved from her pancaked vehicle early Saturday morning. Rescue workers also found 57-year-old Oswaldo Gonzalez and 54-year-old Alberto Arias in a flattened white Chevy pickup. Later in the day, 60-year-old Rolando Fraga was recovered from his gold Jeep Cherokee. Lastly, 39-year-old Brandon Brownfield was pulled from his Ford pickup.
Five dead motorists and one dead construction worker. Navarro Brown died in the emergency room. An absolute travesty. Florida International University President Mark Rosenberg recorded a video statement. Yesterday's tragic accident of the bridge collapse stuns us. It saddens us.
It's exactly the opposite of what we had intended and we want to express our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of those who have been affected. The bridge was about collaboration, about neighborliness, about doing the right thing. But today, we're sad. And all we can do is promise a very thorough investigation, getting to the bottom of this and mourn those who we've lost.
While the local authorities announced the pursuit of criminal charges that would ultimately lead nowhere against the yet-to-be-determined responsible party for the bridge collapse, the National Transportation Safety Board arrived in Miami to determine why it fell. NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt
led the civil transportation accident investigation. I think most of you know that the NTSB is an independent federal agency. We are charged by Congress to investigate transportation accidents, to determine the probable cause, and then to issue safety recommendations to prevent the reoccurrence. I want to emphasize that the NTSB is here to conduct a safety investigation.
We're conducting an independent safety investigation. You may have heard at a press briefing earlier this morning that the local authorities are conducting a homicide investigation, which they pointed out is routine anytime someone dies in an accident or through a crime.
We're not involved in that in any way. We are looking at one thing and that is safety. We're not here to help the lawyers build their cases, to point fingers, to lay blame, to assign fault. What we are here to do is very simple. Find out what happened so that we can keep it from happening again.
The NTSB was informed that, just before the failure, a crew had performed post-tensioning on one of the beams or members where the trusses connected.
It's a method used to reinforce a structure. But why were they doing that? And why did it fail? The NTSB's investigator in charge, Robert Aceta, was determined to find out. Oh, on their testing. As I mentioned, in this member right here is where they were tightening on the cable. And it was to strengthen that member.
Now, we have yet to determine what the failure mechanism was, and that's still under our investigation. But the purpose of tightening that cable is supposed to help strengthen that member, but we need to determine what went wrong. Turns out there was significant cracking in the concrete supporting piers on the north side of the bridge.
FIG's lead engineer, Denny Pate, had been made aware of this issue, but had determined that the cracks were not an immediate safety issue. He even called the Florida Department of Transportation to report the issue two days before the disaster, with plans to repair them at a later date. He left a voicemail for his contact there, who was out of the office on assignment and wouldn't hear the message until after the bridge collapsed. Hey, Tom, this is Denny Pate with FIG Bridge Engineers. I was calling to show...
share with you some information about the FIU pedestrian bridge and some cracking that's been observed on the north end of the span, the pylon end of that span we moved this weekend. So we've taken a look at it and obviously some repairs or whatever will have to be done, but from a safety perspective, we don't see that there's any issue there, so we're not concerned about it from that perspective, although obviously the cracking is not good and something's going to have to be
Denny Pate, FIG's engineer of record, also made the call to re-tension the post-tensioning rods that morning to help close the cracks. The design-build team met at the site for two hours the day the bridge fell.
Fig reiterated that there were no safety issues at that meeting. The post-tensioning contractors were given the green light to do the job. Post-collapse, those cracks that Fig had determined were not a safety issue were discovered to have been 40 times as large as the acceptable max. Soon after the tightening, the truss on the northernmost side of the bridge failed, causing the 170-foot segment of the bridge to fracture in the middle and crush eight cars below.
The FIU pedestrian bridge was doomed by a design flaw, the NTSB announced seven months later at its final report hearing on October 22, 2019. Quote,
The designers had overestimated the load its concrete trusses could bear, thus the cracking, thus the attempted post-tensioning temporary repair, thus the devastating tragedy.
But the bridge's designers weren't the only ones to blame. FIG had hired an independent company called the Lewisberger Group to review the design. According to the NTSB, that review was utterly inadequate. The Lewisberger Group blamed a lack of scope and budget for the reason it wasn't able to catch the fatal design flaw. And FIU had no professional engineers on its staff to catch these errors, even though it oversaw the project.
The school relied entirely on its hired contractors. It was a comedy of errors. Also, why was the street open? Before, during, and after the post-tensioning process. Most of this pain and suffering could have been completely avoided had just one of the organizations involved in the bridge construction rerouted traffic. FDOT said it never received a request to do so.
No one wanted to take responsibility. This is NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt. I've been on this board for 13 years and I don't think I've ever seen a case, and I guess I've deliberated, sat here and deliberated close to 200 accidents. I don't think I've ever seen one where there's more finger pointing between the parties. And you know, the finger pointing is actually correct.
Everybody is pointing at everyone else. In fact, that is correct because everyone shares a piece of this accident. There were errors up and down the line committed by several different organizations and even individuals. Yeah, the bridge was talking to them, but it wasn't just talking. It was screaming that there was something definitely wrong with this bridge. Yet,
No one was listening. It was negligent. It was reckless. It was wrong. It was worthy of a lawsuit or 18. 25 businesses were targeted. The litigation took years. The final lawsuit was settled in 2022. Every case was settled out of court.
All told, the defendants paid out roughly $103 million to the victims and families of the victims who were affected by the collapse of the FIU pedestrian bridge. Money could never replace the loved ones lost, but time marches on. On May 6, 2020, FDOT announced plans to design and rebuild the pedestrian bridge over Southwest 8th Street, Miami, this time with guidance from the NTSB. The project is scheduled for completion in 2025.
A mural for the victims of the 2018 bridge collapse will be included. In 2022, FIU unveiled its statue of Alexa Duran. We're all one faulty measurement away from landing the leading role in an engineering textbook case study. All we can do is learn about it and talk about it so that something like this never happens again. Again, let's hope someone is listening.
One of America's worst man-made disasters occurs at a brand new hotel in Kansas City after warning signs are ignored on this episode of Swindled.
They bribed government officials, cleared violations of federal and state law, paid a plague of taxpayer dollars that were wasted, paid tens of millions of dollars, or a million dollars, dumped books and records, by falsifying its books and records, responsible for the collapse of the entire system, and in control of some kind of swindle. Support for Swindled comes from SimpliSafe.com.
If you're like me, you're constantly thinking about the safety of the people and things you value most. After my neighbor was robbed at knife point, I knew I needed to secure my home with the best. My research led me to SimpliSafe.com.
I've trusted SimpliSafe to protect my home for five years now, and the level of security and customer care has been incredible. I sleep better every night knowing SimpliSafe's 24/7 monitoring agents are standing by to protect me if someone tries to break in and to send emergency help when I need it most.
I want you to have the same peace of mind that I and so many listeners experience every day, which is why I've partnered with SimpliSafe to offer listeners 20% off a system. Just visit simplisafe.com slash swindled. What I love most about SimpliSafe is that it just keeps getting better. With exclusive live guard protection, SimpliSafe agents can act within five seconds of receiving your alarm and can even see and speak to intruders inside your home, warning them that the police are on their way.
As a SimpliSafe user, it's no surprise that SimpliSafe has been named Best Home Security Systems by U.S. News & World Report for five years running and the Best Customer Service in Home Security by Newsweek.
I'm a huge proponent of SimpliSafe, and I'm very happy with my security system. And you will be too. Protect your home this summer with 20% off any new SimpliSafe system when you sign up for Fast Protect Monitoring. Just visit simplisafe.com slash swindled. That's simplisafe.com slash swindled. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.
Eight years ago, the southern edge of downtown Kansas City, Missouri was an area in decay. Today, a new $350 million development stands there. It is called Crown Center, and the fact that it exists is an example of the way that private industry can contribute to the revitalization of America's cities. Crown Center was the brainchild of Joyce Hall, the founder of Hallmark Cards, the greeting card company.
Back in the early 1900s, you could drop out of high school, print the word "thanks" on a piece of paper and make a billion dollars. But Hallmark's neighbors in Kansas City, Missouri hadn't been as ingenious or successful. The neighborhood near downtown where Hallmark headquarters was located had become run down and yucky.
So beginning in the 1950s, Joyce Hall started using his company's private funds to purchase the parcels of land surrounding his office. He envisioned using the property to build a bustling city within a city. Restaurants, theaters, and playgrounds would replace the muffler shops and dilapidated billboards. And that's how a greeting card company invented gentrification unofficially.
Joyce Hall retired before his dream was realized, but his son Donald Hall, who took over as chief of the Hallmark Company in 1966, carried the torch. In 1967, Don Hall pitched the idea of this Crown Center to the city of Kansas City, who loved it, and gave Hallmark eminent domain over the 25 blocks planned for the mixed-use development.
"We intended for Crown Center to stand as a prime example of how private industry can contribute to the rebirth of this nation's inner cities," Don Hall wrote in his autobiography. Hallmark created a wholly owned subsidiary called the Crown Center Redevelopment Corporation to manage the project. Crown was broken in 1968. The initial cost estimate of $115 million ballooned to $400 million in a decade, but Crown Center was taking shape.
As promised, there were restaurants, theaters, a playground, and even a hotel. In fact, in 1978, the Crown Center Redevelopment Corporation announced it would build a second hotel on the complex's northeast edge. It would cost between $40 and $50 million. Hallmark would retain ownership, but the Hyatt Corporation would manage the hotel. Construction began on the Hyatt Regency Hotel and Crown Center in the spring of 1978.
It was a design-build operation. Jack D. Gillum and associates were responsible for all structural engineering services. They would work with the Crown Center Redevelopment Corporation to design the hotel and then subcontract a construction company to build it. The Hyatt Corporation would also have some input. Plans for the hotel included three sections: a 40-story tower featuring 750 rooms. It would be Kansas City's tallest building. There was going to be a revolving restaurant on top.
The other side of the building would house the exhibit hall, conference rooms, health club, ballroom, and swimming pool. And between the two wings was a spacious atrium with west-facing windows and a sunken cocktail bar. It would have that "Jesus Christ" factor that Hyatt unofficially required of all its hotels. Hyatt reportedly wanted its buildings to be so spectacular that the first words out of someone's mouth upon entering would be "Jesus Christ."
The Hyatt Regency and Crown Center's Jesus Christ factor would be these skywalks in the atrium. Magnificent walkways of concrete, glass, and steel suspended in the air by rods that are almost invisible to the naked eye. Guests will feel like they're walking on air as they strut to the other side.
Technically, the walkways were about 8 feet wide and 120 feet long. There would be three of them at the second, third, and fourth floor levels, each one weighing about 64,000 pounds. The fourth floor skywalk would be suspended from the roof framing. The second floor walkway would be suspended from the fourth floor walkway directly above it and hang 30 feet above the atrium floor. The third floor walkway would hang from the ceiling independently to the side of the other two.
The projected opening date for the new hotel was July 1st, 1980. Staying on budget and on schedule was Hallmark's highest priority. Very little could stand in the way of opening the hotel on time, even though minor hiccups in a construction project of this size were to be expected. One of those minor hiccups occurred at 6:00 a.m. on Sunday, October 14th, 1979.
Hallmark told the media that a single, 16-foot steel beam had come loose from the roof's frame and tumbled to the atrium floor. Luckily, no one was in the building at the time. Construction would not be delayed. However, Hallmark had not been fully transparent. The truth was that four steel beams had fallen from the hotel's atrium roof that morning, not just one.
The heaviest beam weighed 12 tons and crashed through the terrace restaurant, through the atrium floor, and into the basement. There was a 20 foot by 100 foot hole in the ceiling. Publicly, Hallmark was unconcerned, but behind the scenes the company seemed to be sweating. It hired an independent engineering firm to inspect the atrium's roof and determine the cause of the collapse. Shoddy workmanship, it was concluded.
Eldridge and Sons Construction, the builder handpicked by Hallmark by way of family familiarity, failed to use expansion bolts to install the atrium roof. The steel beams rested on steel shelves, and when the nighttime temperatures dropped, the steel beams shrunk and pulled off those shelves and fell to the floor. A bit of an amateurish mistake. Some balconies and bridges were installed without expansion and pulled away at the north end. The report also read, referring to the skywalks,
The pull-away effect is very similar to the beam that pulled out and fell from the atrium's roof. No other details regarding the skywalks were provided because it was not part of the inspection scope. As a matter of fact, those skywalks would never be inspected. Instead, after the atrium's roof collapsed, Hallmark's Crown Center Redevelopment Corporation took out an extra $200 million worth of insurance on the project for an additional $33,000 a year.
just to protect themselves from any future accidents. They did this after stonewalling their insurance company from inspecting the damage until after the debris was cleaned up. The following month, November 1979, Jack Gillum, the hotel's structural engineer, issued another warning to Hallmark and Crown Center in a private meeting. Jack Gillum had personally inspected the atrium's roof, quote,
"What I found up there is an abomination. There are 36 separate connections up there, and probably there is something wrong with every single one of them," he concluded. "We feel that this entire area should be rebuilt. Sorry, Jack. That just wasn't going to happen."
Rebuilding the entire atrium roof would delay the project for months. Hyatt had already booked 400,000 reservations. That's millions of dollars in lost revenue, not counting the hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra construction costs. Rebuilding the atrium roof would completely ruin the project's economic viability. Hallmark must have assumed it was safe enough. Even though by the time that meeting took place, and just a week after the atrium's roof collapsed, another incident had occurred.
This time a 16-foot, 80-pound wooden beam fell during the hotel's construction. At this time, people were present. That wooden beam struck an 18-year-old contractor named Paulie Nold in the back of the head. He was on the ground floor looking for his hard hat that a co-worker had playfully slapped off. Paulie's co-workers found him curled into the fetal position, bleeding from every hole in his head.
Crown Center called it a freak accident. Pauly's family was paid $3,000 in workers' comp, and the construction of the hotel resumed before the ground had even cooled. There were deadlines to meet, and Crown Center met every single one. Even after the builder Eldridge went bankrupt during construction, Hallmark tried to save the contractor by giving them a million-dollar bailout. When that failed, Hallmark and Crown Center essentially became their own general contractor.
Nevertheless, by July 1980, the hotel was complete. Well, mostly complete. Certain cosmetic fixes were still pending, and the revolving tower restaurant wasn't yet revolving. But it was close enough. The Hyatt Regency Crown Center Hotel was open for business. Support for Swindled comes from Rocket Money.
Most Americans think they spend about $62 per month on subscriptions. That's very specific, but get this, the real number is closer to $300. That is literally thousands of dollars a year, half of which we've probably forgotten about.
I know I'm guilty, but thankfully, I started using Rocket Money. They found a bunch of subscriptions I'd forgotten all about and then helped me cancel the ones I didn't want anymore. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so that you can grow your savings. With Rocket Money, I have full control over my subscriptions and a clear view of my expenses.
I can see all of my subscriptions in one place. And if I see something I don't want, Rocket Money can help me cancel it with a few taps. Rocket Money will even try to negotiate lower bills for you by up to 20%. All you have to do is submit a picture of your bill and Rocket Money takes care of the rest. They'll deal with customer service for you. It's a dream.
Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's features. Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash swindled. That's rocketmoney.com slash swindled. rocketmoney.com slash swindled.
We're open the 4th of July.
One year after it welcomed its first guest, the Hyatt Regency Crown Center Hotel had become a staple in Kansas City's hospitality industry. One of the ways the hotel ingratiated itself with tourists and locals was by hosting a tea dance every Friday night in its spacious lobby.
People would come from far and wide to dance away the night to some of the Midwest's finest big band music. It was a party, an excuse to get dressed up, a great place to watch people be people. There was a beautiful new hotel and the lobby was an atrium lobby and so you could see up several floors and there were people everywhere. There were balloons, there were streamers, it was just a very festive mood.
That festive mood was ever-present at the hotel's tea dance on Friday, July 17th, 1981. Early birds started arriving at 3 p.m. By 4.30, all of the seating on the atrium floor was occupied. The stragglers would have to find a spot on the floors above, which was fine. The skywalks offered the best view of the local radio station's dance contest. They were encouraging people to dance in the...
walkways and the lobbies and every place. They just said use the entire lobby as a dance floor, which everybody was doing. By 7 p.m., the crowd had grown to an estimated 1,600 people, maybe a little more if you count all the kitchen workers, the waitstaff, and the bartenders, but in America, we usually don't. At 7.04 p.m., the Steve Miller Orchestra returned from a short break and picked up their instruments. The band launched into Duke Ellington's Satin Doll Orchestra.
At 7:05 PM, some attendees remember hearing a noise, like a whip crack, which is now assumed to be the sound of the fourth floor skywalk's connections pulling apart. The walkway broke loose from its ceiling rods and dropped several inches, pausing for the longest moment before completely breaking apart.
The 120-foot, fourth-floor walkway cracked in the center and folded like a trapdoor, causing the entire skywalk and the second-floor skywalk attached underneath to crash onto the atrium floor. There were 150 people on the ground when 64 tons of skywalks landed on them. 50 people on the second skywalk were now sandwiched between the two.
The 16 to 20 partygoers on the fourth floor were catapulted through the air when it landed with a thud, or they were dumped through the crack after frantically reaching for something to hold onto. Instant death for most. The attendees, fortunate enough not to be in the direct path of the tumbling skywalks, were pelted with blood and glass as the force from the skywalks hitting the ground sent a gust of air through the atrium.
Witnesses say there was a silence that followed in the immediate aftermath, absolutely shocked one could imagine. But panic set in as the surrounding carnage dragged them back to reality. "Come to the Hyatt Regency immediately. Three sky bridges fell in." "Three what?" "Sky bridges holding people from the third floor fell and crashed." "Okay." "Immediately." "Hyatt Regency?" "Hyatt Regency immediately." "Alright."
First responders could not have prepared for what they walked into. The smell hit them immediately. Sour like death, mucus and feces. You could taste the blood in the air.
It was chaos, arms and legs sticking out from everywhere, people split in half lengthwise, grey hair on crushed skulls, grey hair on decapitated heads, hands reaching wedding rings, chunks of human beings, people partially crushed and screaming, so much more screaming than you think.
Believe it or not, there were more immediate concerns to tend to. The fourth floor skywalk housed a water pipe that was now broken and gushing into the lobby. There was no way to shut it off because it was connected to tanks, not the city's water supply. There were also live wires swinging overhead. And if the threat of electrocution or fire wasn't enough, someone said they smelled natural gas. The power had to be shut off.
- This certain world due to higher reason, see? - Mm-hmm. - The balcony collapsed and there may be 50 to 100 people. - Oh, Jesus. - Yeah, and we need something that can lift several tons. It's already permanent. People are trapped underneath the balcony.
In near pitch darkness, first responders and volunteers stacked the obviously dead in the center of the lobby to access and hopefully rescue the still living. Additional corpses were placed on the tables in the exhibit hall, which was decorated beautifully with thousands of flowers in preparation for a florist convention scheduled for the next day. Live but injured were taken to the makeshift triage on the hotel lawn.
Live and in need of urgent care, we're taken to one of the city's 15 hospitals via ambulance, helicopter, taxi, or bus. This is Sergeant Jim Treece with the Kansas City Police. They have brought out so far a total of 41 bodies that are in the makeshift morgue that we have adjacent to the lobby area.
It is unknown how many of the estimated 1,500 people that were in the lobby at the time of the collapse may have been injured. We've utilized practically every major hospital in the Kansas City area. At this point, we do know one thing for certain: the death toll is going to rise. Yes, there are a lot more bodies that we can see that we can't get to yet. Why can't you get to them, Sergeant? We can't get the debris moved to get to them.
As the dust settled, rescue workers descended on the skywalks. They used flashlights to peer into the nooks and crannies of the devastation, looking for life. Sometimes they'd find it, and direct men with heavy tools to set them free. Most of the time they would find another unfortunate soul, compressed into an unforgettable shape.
This is Richard Berkeley, the mayor of Kansas City at the time. They are identifying those who are deceased. I've been in the morgue and I've seen each and every one of them. They're trying to get wallets or fingerprints or anything else that they can use. They will try to have that information as soon as possible.
The scene became overwhelmingly loud with the grindings and buzzings of cutting tools and generators, blowtorches, bulldozers, jackhammers, and the jaws of life. It would take a crane to lift the skywalks off of those people. It would take hours for one to arrive and set up inside the hotel. In the meantime, Dr. Joseph Wackerly was mid-workout when he got the call. He was a 35-year-old emergency medical director at a local hospital where he had just finished a long shift.
Dr. Wackerly would lead the medical response to the disaster. He said his first impression of the scene was that a bomb had gone off. I take you down to the Hyatt where you're standing in three inches of water with body parts floating around and people screaming and people trapped and people dying and people begging for help. I don't care who you are, it's going to be a traumatic experience that you'll never forget. Dr. Wackerly sloshed around in the ankle-deep pink water, making determinations.
resetting bones on the spot, directing men with tools to those who could still be saved. Others were told by Dr. Wackerly, very matter-of-factly, to their faces, that they were going to die. There was nothing anyone could do. He'd inject them with Demerol to numb the pain and move on to the next one. As we went around, we found the pockets of people, some most dead,
Some alive, some barely alive. 25-year-old Jeff Durham had a choice to make. His right leg was crushed under a massive steel beam and he was bleeding out. Dr. Wackerly told Jeff that he would be long dead by the time the beam could be lifted.
Jeff's only path to survival was to remove his leg. Jeff Durham agreed. He wanted to live. So Dr. Wackerly instructed Dr. Keith Ashcraft, who attended the T-dance, to perform the amputation.
Dr. Ashcraft cut into Jeff Durham's leg with a large knife from the hotel's kitchen. For almost 20 minutes, Dr. Ashcraft sawed at the bone before giving up and replacing his overmatched tool with a chainsaw. The leg came right off. Jeff Durham was rushed to a hospital where he died 30 minutes later.
Later that night, rescue workers heard a voice that sounded like a child coming from the rubble. They shined the flashlight into a hole and saw 11-year-old Dalton Grant and his mother Connie. They were both smushed into balls and had been unable to move for hours. They were trapped in concrete with only inches to spare and further crowded by surrounding corpses. Connie said she held Dalton's hand and prayed and told him,
I don't know, when he asked if they were going to die. It was really scary because I couldn't actually see the bodies. I could just feel the wet hair on the lady and the guy's shoe and his ankle was really wet and I didn't know if it was blood or water.
Dalton and Connie were pried loose from the pile using jackhammers after eight hours of being trapped. The entire lobby erupted in applause. It was motivation to carry on. After more than eight and one half hours buried alive, the jackhammers break through.
Dalton and his mother are pulled free from their concrete tomb. 34-year-old Mark Williams was standing in line for a drink when the skywalks crushed him. The weight of the walkways forced him into the splits, ripping his legs from their hip sockets. Mark's left leg was pressed against his chest. His left foot almost touched his right ear. His right leg was pinned behind him.
Both of my legs were torn out of the sockets. My left leg was across my chest and behind my right ear and my right leg was pulled out and was up here behind my left ear. So yeah, it kind of made me like a pretzel.
Mark Williams was stuck in that position for nine and a half hours. He was the last person rescued from the collapsed skywalks at 4:30 a.m. He spent the next few months in the hospital. He said one of his legs turned black and had to be cut open to relieve the pressure. The collapsed skywalks were finally lifted by a crane at 7:45 a.m., more than 12 hours after the disaster. There were 31 bodies underneath, many of them unrecognizable.
Emergency responders would spend a few additional hours at the scene performing clean-up. A former police officer told Richard A. Serrano, the author of a great book about this disaster called Buried Truths and the Hyatt Skywalks, that after the bodies were cleared, the cops, security guards, and other volunteers formed an army of "pail carriers." They each grabbed a bucket and waded through the water to scoop up bits of bones, flesh, and teeth.
In total, 111 people were killed that night at the Hyatt Regency Crown Center Hotel. Mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, teachers, veterans, lawyers, an all-female mariachi band from Topeka, an 80-year-old insurance salesman, and an 11-year-old girl scout. Three more would die from their injuries in the following months.
216 additional people were injured, some minor, some life-altering, like Sally Firestone, a quadriplegic ever since. Unsurprisingly, the community responded. Kansas City locals lined up by the thousands to donate blood. Almost everyone in the city was personally affected or knew someone who was. It was difficult to comprehend how something like this could happen. Why do things like this happen?
Many would struggle with those questions for the rest of their lives. "Good evening. What was yesterday a modern miracle of architecture is today the rubble in the lobby of Kansas City's Hyatt Regency Hotel." "The past 18 hours have been the darkest of my life, as well as one of the worst nights in the history of Kansas City," wrote Hallmark president Don Hall.
I find it difficult even to talk about the events of last night, as I know many of you do. The catastrophe and the suffering of the injured bring forth a personal and community grief that requires all of our prayers. It is impossible at this time even to speculate. Investigations are beginning. We too have launched an extensive investigation. In the days and weeks and months ahead, much work must be done. Now it is a time for prayer, compassion, and grief.
Two days later, Don Hall would speak about the tragedy publicly for the last time in an interview with a local newspaper where he expressed his sorrow before saying, quote, Our objective is to get back in the business of operating the hotel. He was not kidding.
It is now five days after the T-Dance tragedy here at the Hyatt Hotel, and accusations concerning the cause of it are beginning to surface. I don't see any reason that a catwalk would collapse in a one-year-old building unless there was some fault somewhere.
Either materials, design, something is wrong somewhere. The building is owned by Hallmark Cards, but managed by the Hyatt Corporation. An official for Hyatt, Pat Foley, says the building's architects have told him the structure was safe. The cat rocks are designed to hold people shoulder to shoulder, as many as you can jam on there. And we don't feel there was anywhere near the amount of people in the building that was somehow released to the press.
As managers of the property, we do know that the structural integrity and safety of the building had been assured
Four days after the collapse of the skywalks at the Hyatt Regency Crown Center Hotel, the National Bureau of Standards, the non-regulatory federal agency now known as the National Institute of Standards and Technology, arrived in Kansas City.
to determine the most probable cause of the disaster. Dr. Edward O. Fring and Richard Marshall of the agency's structural engineering division led the investigation.
The NBS's probe immediately hit a snag when it discovered that Hallmark and the Crown Center Redevelopment Corporation, in the cover of the night, had ordered the removal of the debris and dismantled the undamaged third floor skywalk that was still suspended. The hotel's owners claimed that the materials were a safety hazard, even though the area was cordoned off and the building remained empty. NBS officials, along with Kansas City's mayor, lamented the move.
A fully intact, suspended walkway would have provided valuable insight into why the others had collapsed. Never fear, company officials promised. The Skywalks were transported to a Hallmark-owned warehouse where they would sit untouched. "The officials promised to preserve the Skywalks at a warehouse, but to get the bridges inside, workmen pulled and tried to bend the critical hanging rods."
The National Bureau of Standards' thorough investigation would drag on for months, much longer than the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce's local investigation, which concluded 75 days after the tragedy and found no individual or company at fault, especially not Kansas City's most beloved corporate citizen, Hallmark.
The Chamber of Commerce announced its results on the morning that the Hyatt Regency Crown Center Hotel reopened to the public. Based upon its review, it is the opinion of the technical committee that there is no valid reason to question the safety of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel. It took $5 million to rebuild the hotel's atrium. This time, the Crown Center Redevelopment Corporation hired an architect from New York to design a new terrace, not a skywalk. It
It would be bolted to the floor with more than enough columns. The quick turnaround felt insensitive to some. Others were unbothered. It was a tragic thing obviously and something that I, if I'm typical, I think the average person would feel that they've remedied the situation certainly by now. And it really did not affect my decision as to where I'm staying in town.
Finally, on February 25th, 1982, about seven months after the tragedy, the National Bureau of Standards announced its findings. Dr. Edward Fring prefaced his discussion by reminding everyone that the purpose of their investigation was to find the why of the accident, not the who. It was not within our charge to assess blame, liability, or negligence on anyone's part, Fring said.
And with that, here's the conclusion. The Skywalks were never going to work. The design was flawed since inception. The six thin hanger rods tasked with keeping the fourth and second level walkways suspended would have probably failed from its own weight eventually, but add a live load like dancing people, and that could most certainly expedite the process. "The initial details
Even worse, the Skywalks were not built with six thin hanger rods. They were constructed with 12 thin hanger rods.
Instead of six long rods passing through the fourth floor skywalk into the second floor skywalk, as the original design called for, the fourth floor skywalk was suspended from the roof with six short rods, and the second floor skywalk was suspended from the fourth floor skywalk with six short rods of its own, meaning the short rods attached to the ceiling were supporting the combined weight of both skywalks: 128,000 pounds.
Frank said those rods were only capable of supporting 30% of that load. Quote, Had anyone known how weak they were, they wouldn't have let a janitor sweep on them. I don't know. I bet they would.
Making matters even worse is that those rods were bolted to box beams connected to the ceiling directly through a weakly welded joint.
Again, this was a departure from the original design, which showed the welds on the sides of the box beams, not the top and bottom. Essentially, the entire weight of two Skywalks pulled at its weakest structural point. The NBS at the box beams split along those welds, and the bolts pulled through the gap, dropping the entire structure to the floor.
The agency replicated its theory in lab tests. You can see the nut and washer actually being dragged through the box beam. As the box beam is being pulled down, the nut and washer, essentially out of sight, Fring demonstrated. Much of what Ed Fring and the NBS announced only confirmed what many in Kansas City already knew. The city's two newspapers, The Times and The Star, had conducted their own investigations. They published a Pulitzer Prize winning series of articles in previous months detailing how these design changes were approved.
Haven Steel Company, who manufactured the rods, proposed the idea of fabricating 12 shorter rods instead of these six longer ones. They explained to Jack Gillum's engineering firm that assembly would be much easier with less risk of damage. This important design change was reportedly mentioned in a casual phone call that Jack Gillum and associates claims to have never happened. Not that it matters, there were documents illustrating the change with Gillum's stamp of approval.
The main culprit of the disaster proved to be poor communication. Unverified assumptions, the newspapers found. Each contractor assumed the other contractor had done the math. No one bothered to double check. This is Wayne Lischka, an architectural engineer hired for the Kansas City Star's investigation.
The bottom line is that you had a human failure here. It didn't relate to codes, it didn't relate to intelligence, it didn't relate to anything that needs to be corrected. It was just that somebody didn't pay attention and they needed to.
Nobody was paying attention, and nobody was paying inspectors either, at least not a full-time independent on-site inspector like the architects had requested. The Crown Center Redevelopment Corporation would not approve of those additional costs.
Instead, a company called General Testing, friend of Hallmark, was contracted to do the job and left much of the work in the hands of a 20-year-old. The Hyatt Regency Crown Center Hotel was reportedly that 20-year-old's first construction-related inspection job.
As for the City of Kansas City, their inspectors were nowhere to be found. The newspaper's investigations revealed that many city inspectors, including two assigned to the Hyatt Construction, routinely falsified their timesheets and mileage logs. Those inspectors were found sitting at home, drinking at bars, or eating at diners while on the clock.
17 city building inspectors and two code enforcement officials were fired or suspended as a result. The disaster resulted from a collection of entirely avoidable errors committed by multiple parties, unfortunate mistakes, nothing malicious or inherently evil.
more than 300 lawsuits have been filed, seeking a cumulative total of $3 billion.
Most of them settled quietly out of court within 18 months. However, one lawyer from Kansas City named Robert Gordon was convinced that one entity was primarily responsible. The owners of the building who managed every aspect of the project, who received a clear warning from the 1979 atrium roof collapse, who downplayed that roof collapse in public, who refused to rebuild the roof as advised,
The same entity who refused to hire an on-site inspector or any outside professional that could have found the defects, who refused to fund load tests, who would have lost out on potential millions of dollars in revenue if the opening was delayed. That entity was Hallmark. Robert Gordon alleged that the company had shown a blatant disregard for safety and he had the documents to prove it.
"For sheer intellectual pleasure, I've never known anything to compare with the excitement and challenge of using a defendant's own documents to prove the plaintiff's case," Gordon wrote. "Finding the right piece of paper in a vast, uncharted depository is like discovering a 70,000-carat canary yellow flawless diamond in a flea market. In my experience, the success of any case against a major corporation always depended on the documents."
Robert Gordon had single-handedly poured through a million pages of documents for the case. He had put together a mandatory class action lawsuit against Hallmark and related entities, which was certified in January 1982. Gordon represented hundreds of victims, many of whom just wanted to ensure that something like this couldn't happen again. Gordon surmised that the only way to do that was to tell the public the truth about what happened, and the only way to do that was to put Hallmark on trial.
Unfortunately, Robert Gordon's class was dissolved in June 1982 when a federal appellate court overturned the certification for violating the Federal Anti-Injunction Act by including both state and federal cases in the class.
But the fight would continue. A new opt-out class was formed.
A trial date was set, and Robert Gordon continued to build his case. While Hallmark, referring to themselves as merely a passive investor in the project, tried every stalling tactic in the book, the company wanted a change in venue. It wanted a new judge.
Hallmark also began settling individually with victims at a rapid pace in an attempt to shrink Gordon's class. And it worked. A new class had to be formed, and the games continued. This time Hallmark dropped a bomb by agreeing to a $20 million group settlement in state court, which included many of Robert Gordon's federal plaintiffs. As part of the deal, Hallmark paid the punitive damages but denied all legal liability. Only a couple of dozen plaintiffs remained in Robert Gordon's federal class.
But the trial was still scheduled for January 1983. Some of those present that night started collecting $1,000 checks in a Kansas City insurance office today. Those people must swear they were in the Hyatt the night of the accident and agree to drop all future claims against the hotel.
On the first day of trial, Robert Gordon would arrive to find that his co-counsel had struck a deal with Hallmark's lawyers behind his back over the weekend. The company agreed to pay $10 million, which included a $3.5 million contingency fund to be shared among the victims and a $6.5 million donation to local charities, which was great for public relations. The judge praised Hallmark for making such a deal.
Its healing gesture serves not only as a fitting response to the most unfortunate human tragedy to upset the city, but also as a reaffirmation of Hallmark's position among the corporate leadership of Kansas City and the nation. Hallmark is pleased with the settlement. The defendants feel that this is in the best interest of the public, of the plaintiffs, and of the defendants. Proponents of the settlement said it allowed the city to move on, to heal.
Continuing to point the finger with just prolonged agony, Robert Gordon disagreed, and it was a devastating realization that the public would never learn the truth. Equating the rod and beam failure with the legal and moral reason for the Skywalk's disaster was, quote, as wrong as concluding that the O-Ring alone was responsible for the Challenger tragedy. Robert Gordon couldn't let it go.
After his repeated failed efforts to drag Hallmark into court, Gordon just stopped being a lawyer. He started writing a book instead, a counter-narrative of sorts that the public needed to know. It was called House of Cards, and Simon & Schuster would publish it. Except it never happened. Robert Gordon worked obsessively on the draft and alienated everybody around him for the next ten years. The man was impossible to collaborate with.
Publishers and co-writers would become exasperated after editing Gordon's 850 page manuscript down to 350 pages only for Bob Gordon to reinsert everything that had been removed.
Eventually everyone stopped helping the author. Everyone had the same criticisms, all of which went ignored. The book was never published. Robert Gordon spent the rest of his life profoundly depressed and alone. His wife had left him. He spent most of his days in bed. He died of colon cancer in 2008.
Ten years later, Robert Gordon's son contacted Eli Paul, the director of Missouri Valley Special Collections at the Kansas City Public Library, wanting to donate 180 boxes of his father's research files and his unpublished manuscript. Using those documents, Eli Paul wrote a book about the disaster from Robert Gordon's perspective called Skywalks, Robert Gordon's untold story of Hallmark's Kansas City disaster. It's definitely worth checking out.
In total, Hallmark and related companies paid out approximately $140 million to victims of the Skywalks collapse and their families. At least $50 million of that was covered by insurance.
The company was cleared of any criminal charges in December 1983 when a grand jury agreed that there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone. However, on February 3, 1984, the engineers were punished. Jack Gillum and Dan Duncan of Jack D. Gillum & Associates were stripped of their license to practice engineering in Missouri.
A catastrophe such as the Hyatt is not caused by, nor is the fault of any one or two individuals, Gillum said. It is the result and culmination of many errors, oversights, and human mistakes. Yet as the engineer of record on the project, the bug stopped with him. He realized that this is Jack Gillum. The most important lessons learned from the Hyatt are that each individual has to be responsible for what he does.
Two, that you have to follow up any problems that occur. Three, that you have to have communication. The Skywalk's collapse at the Hyatt Regency Crown Center Hotel remains the deadliest non-deliberate structural failure in American history. Its legacy can be found in engineering and emergency management curriculums worldwide. It was also one of the first major events that brought awareness to the psychological trauma suffered by first responders.
PTSD is a common trait shared among victims and rescue workers of the Skywalks disaster. Today, a memorial for those lost in the tragedy stands in Hospital Hill Park near the hotel in Crown Center. It's a 20-foot tall sculpture of an abstract couple embraced in a dance. The memorial took 34 years to build.
The Skywalk Memorial Foundation began raising money for it in 2005. More than 300 donors made cash or in-kind contributions to the nonprofit, including Hallmark, who chipped in $25,000. But it would take nearly 10 years to raise the remaining funds required. A memorial monument to the victims is being planned, but the Hyatt Corporation now says it will not contribute to it.
The Hyatt Corporation did not want to contribute to the memorial because that hotel and Crown Center where the disaster happened was actually a Sheraton now. True story. However, after a public backlash, Hyatt ultimately donated $25,000 to the project. Sheraton matched that amount. In 2021, on the 40th anniversary of the tragedy, families gathered at the memorial to remember.
Every Kansas Citian was either impacted or knows someone who was impacted by the tragedy. Mayor Quentin Lucas addressed the crowd. We will always grieve with you, he promised. 40 years from now, 80 years from now, when there's a whole new set of folks to share the stories. Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard, a.k.a. Deformer, a.k.a. Crown Center.
For more information about Swindled, you can visit swindledpodcast.com and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok at swindledpodcast. Or you can send us a postcard at PO Box 6044 Austin, Texas 78762. But please, no packages. We do not trust you.
Swindled is a completely independent production, which means no network, no investors, no bosses, no shadowy moneymen, no cutting corners. We plan to keep it that way, but we need your support. Become a valued listener on Patreon, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify at valuedlistener.com.
For as little as five bucks a month, you will receive early access to new episodes and exclusive access to bonus episodes that you can't find anywhere else. And everything is 100% commercial free. Become a valued listener at valuedlistener.com.
Or if you want to support the show and need something to wear to help strengthen that member, consider buying something you don't need at swindledpodcast.com slash shop. There are t-shirts, patches, hats, hoodies, posters, coffee mugs, and more. swindledpodcast.com slash shop. Strengthen that member. And remember to use coupon code CAPITALISM to receive 10% off your order. If you don't want anything in return for your support, you can always simply donate using the form on the homepage. That's it. Thanks for listening.
Hi, my name is Maserati from Albuquerque, New Mexico. My name is Rina from Ottawa, Canada. Hey, a concerned citizen. I'm Joanne. And I'm Jay. And we're calling from Reykjavik, Iceland. We are concerned citizens and very proud to be a valued listener. Keep up the good work. Very fucking concerned citizens. Take care. Bye-bye.
Thanks to SimpliSafe for sponsoring the show. Protect your home this summer with 20% off any new SimpliSafe system when you sign up for Fast Protect Monitoring. Just visit simplisafe.com slash swindled. That's simplisafe.com slash swindled. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.