Stuff You Should Know - The Hyatt Regency Skywalk Disaster

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

In 1981 America suffered the worst accidental structural collapse in its history. Listen in today to the tragic story of the fast-tracked building disaster that stills haunts Kansas City. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sometimes the pop culture we love just teens hits differently in retrospect. Maybe it's a tabloid story we couldn't get enough of or an illicit student teacher relationship on our favorite show. We're Suzy Bannock-A-Rum and Jessica Bennett, posts of the new podcast in retrospect, where each week we'll revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped us and probably you to try to understand what it taught us about the world and our place in it. You're the first person that I've talked to about this for years and years. Listen to In Retrospect on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your favorite shows.

Everyone in our country has a voice. It's something that says not just where you come from, but who you are. Welcome to NPR's Black Stories, Black Truths, a collection of podcasts and a celebration of the hosts in journalism who've always spoken truth to power. Our voices are as varied, nuanced, and dynamic as the Black experience, and stories should never be about us without us. Find NPR Black Stories Black Truths on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and it's just the two of us

and we're going to do just fine. I have a good feeling because this is Stuff You Should Know. We've been at it for decades now. Not decades, well, in different decades. Right, that's how people get you. Yeah, they say stuff like that. That's right. Big COA for this one, it is about a very gruesome tragedy that we're gonna detail and we're gonna talk about

a little bit of the gruesome stuff, but not get to, you know, detailed because it was a terrible tragedy, but we just want to alert listeners, especially our younger listeners so that some of this stuff is pretty terrible, that is the events of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri in 1981. Yeah. And that was just one year after that hotel opened, right? That's right. This is the Hyatt Regency, a 45-story 700-room hotel

that opened in July of 1980. It was a part of a big suite. A complex called the... Crown Center? Huh. Yeah. The Crown Center Complex. Right. And it had retail, had housing, all kinds of stuff owned by the Hallmark Corporation.

That's where the crown came from. Can you remember if you turn a Hallmark card over sometimes it says Crown? Well, then their logo is a crown. Oh yeah, that's true. But this hotel chuck, if you go back and look at pictures of it pre-disaster, it was magnificent. Like, if you looked up, you would see that there was a high a hall, a walkway right over your head. And that was actually one of three that were kind of like

the signature design of this atrium at the high-regency Kansas City. That's right. And like we said, this thing had been open for about a year when the collapse tragedy occurred during one of their, they were hosting these weekend tea dances, which apparently were very popular in town. It was sort of an antiquated old school thing that they did, but the people of Kansas City ate it up, and they were just growing bigger and bigger with every weekend. And on this particular weekend, they had, you know, as they did, they had a live band playing. And I saw anywhere from, I saw a thousand people in different places. This is one of those things where like every time you see a different video, you'll get different numbers and different things. And these can be a little frustrating sometimes,

but at least a thousand. And maybe as many as 2,000 people there, hanging out, partying and dancing in the lobby. Yeah, I mean, if you see, there's footage of it because I think one of the local TV stations was doing a human interest piece on how popular this dance had become this Friday night dance. And that place was packed with people,

not just in the atrium on the floor, but also up at the terrorist restaurant and on those three walkways that span the entire length of the atrium from one side to another on the second, third and fourth floors. So there was a ton of people and the number I most commonly saw was 1500. So I guess everybody else split the difference.

Yeah, so it's crowded, it's packed full of people. A little after 7 o'clock, the band comes back from a break to play their final big number of the dance contest. And, you know, when you look at interviews with people from the time, they all describe hearing three loud popping noises or snapping noises. They sounded like, you know, some people said they sounded like gunshots going off.

And in very quick succession, floors, the walkways on floors 4 into collapsed fully. These cement, and we're going to go over why this happened and what these were all were made of, but steel and concrete. It was super heavy and collapsed on hundreds and hundreds of people below. Yes. Each one I think weighed something like 32 tons. Each of these walkways did. And one was above the

number of the fourth story walkway was directly above the second story walkway. So much so that the second story walkway was dangling from the fourth story walkway. So in the fourth story walkway gave it came down the second story hit the ground first, the fourth story walkway hit the second floor. So there was like a stratum or a strata of layers of destruction of debris and people were pinned Chuck beneath two 32 ton walkways that were in four segments. So each segment was at 32 tons, but it was enough to really do a lot of damage. Like immediately, like it apparently happened in the blink of an eye basically. And I mean, like it's really tough to get across like how much of a tragedy this was like

there were couples dancing that were killed simultaneously by this stuff. So that means that there were people in Kansas City who lost both parents all at once or lost one parent or lost a friend like a lot of people were impacted by this tragedy and it just happened in just the blink of an eye. Yeah, I mean, it ripped from the ceiling and they just collapsed. The eyewitness accounts, if you see any of the either contemporaneous footage or they've done interviews with people since and like follow-up

documentaries and such. It's just awful. Everyone talked about how in like the some people set up to like five seconds afterward, it was just complete silence. Like obviously the every the band had stopped and there was just a brief moment of nothingness. And then all of a sudden, screaming, wailing, people, and some of the most horrible pain and circumstances that you can imagine, which again, we're going to get to it a little bit, but it's, if you really want to dive into the, down the rabbit hole of what all happened to these folks, you can, you can look this stuff up online. Yeah, there's actually a lot of really well written articles on it out of Kansas City.

But in that chaos that ensued almost immediately, there were a lot of people pinned underneath, there were people who had been injured by debris. And then there are other people who were nearby and were just dazed and weren't really injured at all, but just couldn't believe what they'd just seen. And then there was a small kind of cadre of people among the witnesses who just kind of immediately sprang into action. And when you see footage of the immediate aftermath,

you see men in suits and women in dresses like trying to pick through the debris and get people out of there as fast as they can. And all of this just started even before the fire department and police department showed up to start to take charge of things. People just immediately, some people had an impulse to go in there and help. Yeah, it was, and you know, we should mention that the fire department, the cops, everyone got there really, really fast. Yeah. Apparently, they were also close to hospitals. I think they were three, it was called Hospital Hill, three hospitals that were really nearby

that started taking people on. They were working, you know, basically into the night and into the next morning with a final death toll of 114 people perished and more than 200 were injured. And I think they still listed as the, in American history, at least the largest structural disaster in history. That, it was until September 11th, the largest in American history. That it was until September 11th, the largest in American history, and then it became the largest accidental structural disaster

in American history. So yeah, 114 people dead, 111, like basically dead on the scene, three more people who were gravely injured, died later on from their injuries. And the people who survived, there were incredibly survivors who were pinned under these walkways, these slabs of concrete, but they were in terrible shape. And there was a man named Mark Williams, who was a survivor.

And he's, if you read about this or watch videos on it, he's very prominent. He's a very outspoken type of guy and he talked a lot about being rescued. He was the last person rescued all the way at 4.30 a.m. but he was at the bar that was directly beneath the walkways and realized what was happening and started to run and those walkways fell so fast that apparently he didn't even get his first stride, but his legs were astride. And so he was smushed down into a split. And that's where he stayed until 4.30 a.m. and this happened at like 7 p.m. and he survived. He managed to live.

And there were other stories like that too, a little 11 year old boy who was pulled out of the rubble. A few people, I think six or seven or something like that, were did manage to survive, but the vast majority of people who were on or under the walkways when they collapsed died. Yeah, there was, there were situations where they had to amputate arms and legs on the spot just to get people out of there and give them a chance at living. And they did this kind of thing with chain saws. There was one, and this is really gruesome, but there was one horrific story of a guy that

was trying to pull someone out, and the guy's arm just comes off and he's holding it. And the officer on charge said the guy just set it down and left. And we'll get to the PTSD that obviously followed. But a lot of these first responders, there were some suicides later on. There was alcoholism and drug use and lives and shambles because they didn't have stuff like, you know, they went to work the next day. They weren't like, all right, we need to get you into counseling, quick like, and start taking care of you. And that's one of the big changes that came out of this was PTSD therapy for emergency

responders. Yeah, and it had an impact on the entire city. I mean, people who weren't there, people who didn't even know people who were there were still impacted for years and years. It just had a, it just left a blotch on the city. It was just such a horrible tragedy. And there were a couple of other stories

that stuck out to me of the people who died. One that did was a woman named Lynn Vanderhaden, who was 22, and she was just happened to be walking through the lobby on her way to the revolving restaurant on the top of the hotel. She was just passing through when she died. And then another one that stood out was a man named Oscar Grimm, who pushed his wife Joan out of the way. And she lived and he died, but he managed to act that quickly, that he was able to save his wife's life.

His last act on Earth was to save his wife's life, which I think is remarkable. Yeah, that's amazing. So they turn, it basically becomes a war zone immediately. They, you know, turn one room into a triage center. They turn one room into a temporary morgue. They're trying to get people out of there and into the parking lot. It is summertime. So it's still daylight during the initial rescue efforts, but as darkness fell, the power had been blown. So then it becomes dark overnight when they're still digging through there,

either trying to get dead bodies out or trying to get people out that are still just wailing in the darkness. And not only that, but the sprinkler system had torn apart and a water pipe burst. and for about 50 minutes, this, you know, parts of this room were filling up with water and, you know, let's say you're trapped in a very small confined space that's filling up with water, there were survivors that said they thought they were going to drown all of a sudden. I didn't see that anyone definitively did drown, but the people on the bottom of that pile were definitely in danger of it for sure. It took 45 minutes, I think, to finally turn the water off.

48. 48, and then, but there was a quick-thinking fire chief. I don't know if it was a deputy chief. I saw I didn't get their name and there were a bunch of deputy chiefs there, but they were like, we need to bulldoze these front doors because they're acting as a dam. So they bulldoze the doors and let the water out and kind of save the day. But that was, I mean, imagine being pinned beneath this rubble and now you might accidentally drown. Like, what a day. Yeah, it was, it was a tragedy that still looms large and maybe we should take a break and talk about what happened and why this happened right after this.

This is In Retrospect, a podcast about pop culture from the 80s and 90s that shaped us. I'm very much a product of the pop culture I consumed, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm Jessica Bennett, a New York Times writer and bestselling author. I'm Susie Bedeck-Hurham, an award-winning TV producer and filmmaker. Every week, we'll revisit a moment in cultural history that we just can't stop thinking about. From tabloid headlines to illicit student teacher relationships, and one, very memorable red swimsuits. I found myself in Pamela Anderson's attic as you do.

I put that red swimsuit in a safe because it seemed everybody wanted it. We're digging deep to better understand with these moments taught us about the world and our place in it. I want you to really smell the ax body spray that emanated during this time. It was presented more as kind of like a crime topic.

Okay, and that's not a lot of story. I think not a love story. It had been branded on the uterus's of every single woman from C to shining sea. Listen to In Retrospect on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Everyone in our country has a voice. It's something that says not just where you come from,

but who you are. Welcome to MPR's Black Stories, Black Truths, a collection of podcasts and a celebration of the host and journalism who've always spoken truth to power. Our voices are as varied, nuanced, and dynamic as the Black experience, and stories should never be about us without us. Find NPR Black Stories Black Truths on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

What's up everybody? this is Suncane. And Demelia Hartford. And this is our new podcast, CAR Stories. We get to bring you guys into our world and our community, or maybe otherwise, you would never get to meet these incredible people. Including friends like Peter Brown, who did all the sound design for the Fast and Furious movies. CARs are a fantastic opportunity to be an extension of the characters in the film. The more weird character that I can get into a car, the better. And then we also get to talk to Matt Farah, the Wikipedia of Cars.

This truck was wild. It was really a two-seater, but it had eight cup holders for two people. And we also have John Oates, Jordana Brewster, Jesse Uuji, Rod Amory, and so many more. Listen to car stories with some king, and Amelia Hartford. On the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Because even if you're not a gearhead, everyone has a car story. Hi, I'm Hillary Clinton back with a new season of My Podcast, you and me both. On this show, I'll be talking to people I admire about many things, including one of my favorite subjects, Getting Things Done.

We'll hear from folks and positions of power, like Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries, but also writers and actors, community organizers really anyone who shows up every day and keeps doing the work. There's so much out there to distract us, but all of my guests bring tremendous passion and commitment, an ability to block out the noise, and I should probably warn you lots of sports metaphors. You stay calm and focused on releasing the ball, getting it to a receiver, and hopefully getting it into the end

zone on behalf of the American people. So join me for this conversation and more. Listen to you and me both on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, there were so many people and very fortunately, like you said, they were near a few hospitals, but they ended up requiring 17 emergency rooms for this. Yeah, they construction companies came in and were donating forklifts,

they were donating cranes, people were donating their own personal equipment. Everybody basically came and chipped in, you mentioned those front doors being knocked down. They ended up knocking holes through the entire front of the hotel, not holes. There was no front of the hotel because they had to get a crane in there eventually, because all the equipment that they were trying to get forklifts, you name it, to try and lift these concrete slabs. It was

just pushing everything out of the way. So they ended up having to bring in, like, you know, the most heavy duty construction crane you can imagine to pull these things up eventually. So I saw a check that, like, there were all these amazing acts of people of generosity, of heroism and just people coming together. And I also saw from some of the people who were involved that within hours of the tragedy, the mood did like a 180 and people started to want to know

what happened, what had gone wrong and who was to blame because it was very clearly something had gone terribly wrong with the structure of the skywalks and people wanted to know why. Because again, this was just such a catastrophic loss of life. It was almost incomprehensible, but it started to settle in that it had happened and that somebody somewhere was to blame and people wanted to know. Yeah, so what they eventually figured out, and this was after some pretty amazing investigation by the National Bureau of Standards, which is now the National Institute of Standards and Technology,

they were, I mean, they did, they x-rayed material, they did metallurgical examinations of steel, they did physics tests, they did everything you could imagine to figure out what went wrong and what they landed on, it turns out, they didn't really need to do any of those tests. It was a design change that was, as it turns out, basically rubber stamped. The original design of these walkways that were, again, two and four were suspended above

each other and four number three, which didn't collapse, was just offset from that one, kind of over the center of the atrium. But the original design called for these skywalks to be held together with one, you know, group of continuous steel rods that went through both floors and all the sets of these hollow beams threaded with nuts. But this was like, you know, 45 feet or so of threaded rod. And they said, you know what? Threading wears out. And if you thread a nut 45 feet, that's a long way.

And eventually, by the time you get to where you want to go, that things not going to be as strong as it needs to be. So they changed the design to basically hang the second floor from the fourth floor using two sets of rods instead of one continuous set, which basically doubled the weight of what everything was hanging on on floor four. There's a great YouTube video. I believe the guy is English, his name is Tom Scott, but he got a, an engineer, the

Scott named Grady from Pregical Engineers, who put it like this. Imagine a long rope that two friends are hanging on, one person is hanging above the other, that's fine. Then imagine that same rope with the same two people hanging, but in this case, the second person is hanging from the other person's ankles. So the total weight is the same, but the stress on that first person or in this case, that first top fourth floor is different. Yeah, I saw a guy named Bill Quip, a quadman who said flagpole instead of rope. So I think that kind of demonstrates Chuck because it's such an easy analogy that you could have looked at these designs. And I mean, you specifically, and me, and been like, are you sure this is the same as what you guys originally had,

like as far as the math goes? It was so radically different. But at the same time, it seemed like, yeah, it's a no-brainer. Of course, that's what you're gonna do, because not only are those, could those threads wear out, like you're gonna have to put the entire skywalk on each of those six threads,

those six hanging rods, threaded hanging rods, like you're gonna have to slide them down, and of course you're gonna damage some of those threads, and then they're totally useless. You won't be able to screw those nuts all the way up to the bottom of the skywalk any longer. So what you're going to do, you just cut it in half. It makes total sense. It's still the same general design.

The two skywalks are hanging from the ceiling. But like you said, now the second floor skywalk is hanging from the fourth floor skywalk. And that was a, that was a catastrophic mistake because the skywalks themselves were in no way shape or form designed to hold up their own weight and they were attached on either end to, basically, portals that led to the hallways that continued on the fourth, second, and third floor on either side. Those connections to those portals were in no way shape or form designed to hold the walkway up. So I think I said they span the entire length of the atrium, which is 120 feet. So these were 120 feet long skywalks.

And they had brass handrails that was high. And then between that and the skywalk was class. It was super cool looking super late 70s, early 80s design, right? They were attached to the end hallways on either side. So they were basically like the hallways were just suddenly stripped of everything around them except for the part you walked on. And that's what crossed to the atrium. It's pretty cool. They were attached to the hallways that continued on either side through portals, and the actual span itself was held aloft by three box beams that were perpendicular to the length of the walkways

themselves. You had basically, it looked like a kid's swing, but three of them, and then you had the walkways spanning those three things. Does that make sense? I think so. So the walkway was held up by those three box beams that were held aloft each by two hanging rods. And it just couldn't do it. What's surprising to me is that it lasted a full year after it opened, you know? Yeah, I mean, I guess we could go over the load bearing here that seems to be a pretty good place for it. The NBS, like I said, who was doing the investigating, they did testing, they built their own version of this stuff, and they went and found that the load bearing capacity for just one individual connection was 81

kilo-nootons, which I've never heard up before. To clear things up, Chuck, a kilo-nooton is equal to 1 kilogram meter per second squared. So. I'm sure that clears it up for everyone. Right. And that's just the, you know, that's called the dead low. That's the way to the structure itself. If you have people on it, obviously, it's going to be a lot different. And there were a lot of people on this.

They were up there having a good time and dancing and partying. They said that would add another 11 kilo-neutons. So eventually you get to a total, you know, by the time it collapsed, the total weight of 95 kilo-neutons, which was 14 more than it was even supposed to hold to begin with. Right. That's just like, that's how it was in reality. The thing that makes it even worse to me is that that doesn't meet code at all.

Code is that you would have to basically double that amount of load bearing capacity to have passed inspection. And yet these things passed inspection. At the time, it was double? Yes. Yeah, that wasn't a change. Like, this thing passed inspection, despite the code requiring it to be able to support 181 kilo-noons. Like you said, they were able to support 81 kilo-noons. So it was a terrible design, and the only explanation

was the actual explanation that when they changed that design from the singular rods, which is two guys hanging separately on a fire pole or a rope rather than hanging on their ankles, when they changed it, no one did the calculations to see if it would hold up. And that is exactly what happened. Yeah, they, you know, they did, of course, when something like this happens, you're going to inspect like the happens, you're going to inspect the welding, you're going to inspect the steel. I know they subpoenaed the actual steel manufacturer and the welding company and the GC and basically

everybody involved. What they found was this thing, basically, the welds would eventually rip. They had these two sort of seed bracket beams that they welded together to form one hollow squared beam and the rods ran through the middle of these and those did split and the bolts basically pulled, you can see pictures where it just pulled right up through the center of them, but they said that this would happen anyway even if it was like a solid steel beam and not too welded together. It wasn't because the welds, it wasn't because of anything basically other than the fact that this design change made it almost inevitable.

So this design change was done by the steel fabricator on what are called shop drawings. And shop drawings are basically like a close-up explanation of exactly how you're supposed to manufacture what the engineer or the architect wants, right? And the steel fabricator says that they called the architect in charge, a guy named Daniel Duncan, and got his approval over the phone to change the rods from one single rod to two rods split in half. And that was it. There was no, no one on the steel fabricator side did the calculations. And yet they stamped their approval on it. Dan Duncan didn't do the calculations. And yet he stamped his approval on it. And then a guy named Jack Gillum, who was the art of the engineer of record, who Dan Duncan worked for who was the art of the engineer of record

who Dan Duncan worked for and was in charge of this project. He didn't do the calculations and he stamped a seal of approval on that change as well. So it made it through. It made it through the process that it's supposed to go through. And when you're sitting there building this or when you're sitting there putting all this together and you're looking at that shop drawing and it's got all three stamps that it's supposed to have. You're pretty sure that that's, it's the way it's supposed to be. People don't stop and question that kind of thing

or at least they didn't during this construction phase. Yeah, I think that's an important to remember because I think people stop all the time and say things aren't safe and that we should revisit stuff. Yeah. But they didn't hear. There was even apparently, you know,

an interview after the fact that we're crew from the build site that were saying like they saw these beams sort of stressing and bending a little bit when they were putting this thing together. There was a collapse earlier, a huge section of the roof collapse on this building in the middle of the night while they were building it. So this was a project that already had sort of one near tragedy averted on its hands. And it was just sort of push through and no one spoke up.

And of course, I'm not blaming the builder who saw the steel flags. But like, you know, everyone should be able to stand up and say, and not just assume that someone else knows what they're doing when it comes to a project like this. Yeah, I think that's essential, and I think that this disaster actually kind of helped change that too. That was one of the things that did change. So I say Chuck, we take a break and come back and talk about some of the fallout from this. All right, let's do it. This is in retrospect, a podcast about pop culture from the 80s and 90s that shaped us. I'm very much a product of the pop culture I consumed. Yeah, and I don't think that's a bad thing.

I'm Jessica Bennett, a New York Times writer and bestselling author. I'm Susie Bedecarem, an award-winning TV producer and filmmaker. Every week, we'll revisit a moment in cultural history that we just can't stop thinking about. From tabloid headlines to illicit student teacher relationships, and one, very memorable red swimsuits. I found myself in Pamela Anderson's attic, as you do. I put that red swimsuit in a safe because it seemed everybody wanted it.

We're digging deep to better understand what these moments taught us about the world and our place in it. I want you to really smell the axe body spray that emanated during this time. It was presented more as kind of like a crime topic. Okay, not a love story. Not a love story. It had been branded on the uteruses of every single woman from C to shining sea.

Listen to In Retrospect on the iHeartRadio app,, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Everyone in our country has a voice. It's something that says not just where you come from, but who you are. Welcome to NPR's Black Stories Black Truths, a collection of podcasts and a celebration of the hosts and journalism who've always spoken truth to power. Our voices are as varied, nuanced, and dynamic as the Black experience, and stories should never be about us without us. Find NPR Black Stories Black Truths on the iHeart Radio app

or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up? This is Big Long. Check out my podcast, It's Up To. Each and every Monday, It's Up To Your Podcast brings a conversation for supporters and business leaders of the coach. From the podcast, business, music, and entertainment deals,

we have an in-depth dialogue with a level of understanding for everyone. Bringing you interviews from your favorites like Brandon Marshall, Lil Baby, Shalamey Gawd. I imagine that Wendy was Wendy, right? And she had this young proteota jay named Charlemagne from South Carolina that she put her arm around and then that person became who he is.

Yo, there's nothing flyin' in that. And that's the most bad thing. Like, like, like, forget what you can grow a tree, but the illest thing is to have mad fruit from that tree. From lifestyle insights to bridging that knowledge to money gap, real-weekly dose of high value entertainment Laf cry soaking game with every episode join us on Monday listen to us up their podcasts on the black-effect podcast network I heart radio help Apple podcast or whatever you get your podcast

What's up everybody? This is Sun King and Emilia Hartford and this is our new podcast car stories we get to bring you guys into our world and our community where it may be otherwise you would never get to meet these incredible people including friends like Peter Brown who did all the sound design for the Fast and Furious movies cars are a fantastic opportunity to be an extension of the characters in the film. The more weird character that I can get into a car, the better. And then we also get to talk to Matt Farah, the weak competing of cars. This truck was wild.

It was really a two-seater, but it had eight cup holders for two people. And we also have John Oates, Jordana Brewster, Jesse E. Wuji, Rod Amory, and so many more. Listen to car stories with some king, and Amelia Hartford, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Because even if you're not a gear head, everyone has a car story. So, before we broke, you mentioned again, Jack Gillum, who was the engineer in charge of the project. Gillum would go on to be a public speaker. He later went on to say, you know, the problem,

this is a quote, was so obvious that a first year engineering student could have figured it out. Too little, too late, obviously. There was a tribunal form by the Missouri Board of Professional Engineers in 1984 in the years following that ruled that they were grossly negligent.

The phone approval was obviously grossly negligent and there was, quote, a conscious indifference to professional duty. So how does that happen? It was a time where there was a lot of production and construction being rushed through, not just there, but all over the place. The late 70s and the early 80s. It just seems like there were a lot of fast track projects. There wasn't as much oversight. There weren't as many rules in place. And there was a lot of stuff. Ed, who helped us out with this pointed out, the Kimper Arena roof collapse in 79. The Hartford Civic Center had another collapse in the year before in 78. The Chat Plane Towers in Miami that collapsed in 2021, they were built in that time in the late

70s and early 80s. So it just seems like it was a time where people were probably just rushing around, trying to make money, greed is always a factor I think in stuff like this, and just trying to build build build. So yeah, and there was a cascading chain of failures to not pass the buck to actually stop and look at things, but you can really lay at the most that Duncan and Gillum's feet. And that tribunal that Gillum went through found, like you said, that he was grossly negligent, but the way that they proved his negligence was that his firm had a policy that the engineer

of record on any project had to verify all plans and all changes themselves before stamping it with approval. And the fact that he had failed to meet his own requirements, the tribunal said, that's proof positive that you were negligent in this. And then they also said, apparently he had a lot of pushback that he was giving. He would not accept responsibility. He deflected it at every turn. And it was so his attitude about it was so cavalier, they said, that they cited it as an additional breach of professional obligations. It was that bad. That like his refusal of accept responsibility was yet another piece of negligence that happened after the fact.

Yeah, and you know, if all this stuff sounds criminal, none of it rose to any kind of criminal proceeding. It was a civil legal quagmire. Like we said, it was owned by Hallmark Cards, this building, and the ones around it. And there were 130 plus lawsuits. They didn't all get together and kind of go after them together, which sometimes can happen. They were fragmented. Some people went at it alone. Some people got together with a few other people. And there were 130 suits plus total, seeking more than $3 billion in damages.

The hotel cost $50 million to build to begin with, like the entire operation. And depending on the cases, they always settled, sometimes kind of right up until they were supposed to go to trial. But they did settle all of them in various ways. There was a woman named Winfred Witcher who got $500 because her face got cut. There was a widow in four kids of Henry Botnan who got $600,000. Different federal courts would come in, or different judges would come in, and basically say, all right, let's get together on a large settlement. One ended up being a thousand dollars to

basically anybody who could prove they were there. Period. Like whether or not they were injured, if you could prove you were there, you would get a thousand bucks. Yeah, and I guess wave any right to see you after that point. Well, sure, but they ended up paying out something like $140 million. Most of it came from Hallmark. Yes, not 150. Well, and that's in early 80s dollars, I believe, right? Yeah, I mean, not close to the three bill.

No, no, no, for sure. But they, the Hallmark ended up paying out mostly because they were the ultimate owner of that hotel. And from what I saw, they were, there was a guy who was suing Hallmark, but Hallmark settled. And the lawyer had done all this extensive research and discovery and it basically found that Hallmark

was really more culpable than anyone thought. And Hallmark settled, the thing never got published. But I got the impression that's why Hallmark ended up spending the most money out of anybody to settle these claims. And the whole experience just tore the town apart because there were people who wanted to get to the truth and wanted, you know, retribution. And apparently the business community really wanted to kind of sweep it under the rug for a lot of different reasons, but I think a lot of the boosters were like, this is a black eye on the city. I saw it described as and the Kansas city star and the Kansas city times said,

no, no, no, we're going to report on this, even in the face of community, pushback, I guess. And they won up, uh, polisers for their reporting for local reporting, um, because they, they, they got to the bottom of what actually happened. Yeah, there was a guy, um, like you said, there was a news crew on the scene anyway for the tea dance. And this cameraman was filming a lot of the aftermath and he had people there that were

victims that were coming up trying to like rip his camera away and start a fight with a guy saying he shouldn't be shooting that stuff. But people came to his defense in the moment. What I don't get is how, I mean, I know Hallmark ultimately will pay because they were the parent company, but how did someone say they were more culpable than when it's really obvious that it was a design change that was rubber-staped by this design firm? Like what did Hallmark? It's not like they ran that up the greeting card chain and they said, yeah, let's do that. This is the impression I have that the whole thing was fast and loose and cutting corners

was in part because hallmark or the subsidiary hallmark owned that owned the hotel was cheaping out and One of the one piece of evidence I saw that kind of puts that together is was from Gillum Who one of his defenses was I asked for on-site inspectors at the metal fabricators at the job site everywhere and Hallmark wouldn't shell out the extra money to make that happen had there been an inspector on site Then this would have never happened kind of thing. So I think one of the reasons why the business community wanted to sweep it under the rug is hallmark is the It was at least at the time that and away, the largest employer in Kansas City

very much beloved. A lot of people owed their livelihood to hallmark. Their kids went to college because of hallmark. It was a really well-regarded company. And apparently that was that facade or whatever, that image was attacked by the times and the star. And that was one reason why some people were so against that reporting. Because even if you didn't have anything to hide, but you still had an affinity for

hallmark because they were your employer, you might be upset at the news for reporting that kind of thing even. Sure. A lot of the many millions of dollars were earmarked for charities that Hallmark donated to as part of these plea deals. Hyatt actually sued for four million dollars, but not Hallmark. They sued the design firm. They sued 12-drin for parties, including the design firm, the GC, the steel manufacturer. I could not find out what happened with those lawsuits, which was really frustrating, but there were lawsuits all over the place.

Yeah, it was a mess, and as you would expect. And like I said to this, the shadow hung over the entire city for a decade. Apparently it came at a really terrible time because the city had just gone through a burst of prosperity, I think. And this hotel was kind of a symbol of that. And so it kind of really shook the foundations of this kind of exuberant Kansas City. Like, you know, how like when you're the more excited you are, the more happy you are, the harder you fall when something comes along and just completely undermines that. I get the impression that that was kind of what happened to Kansas City. It took a long time for it to recover. It wasn't until 2008 that they even managed to erect a memorial because apparently there are so many people who didn't want to think about it or

talk about it or memorialize it. But somebody, some of the survivors' family or some of the victims' families got together and created a memorial at a park just at block or so away and Hallmark kicked in $25,000. That's right to build the memorial itself. It is still there. The high-at-regency is and that atrium is still there and the walkway on the second floor is still there. Of course, it's not held up by, it's not suspended, it is held from underneath by columns. And obviously, and you know, I mentioned the PTSD for first responders.

That was a big push after this. And then also just, you know, a general tightening up of, and this wasn't just in Kansas City. This was an international incident. So it really shook up the industry as far as how fast and loose things were going overall. Yeah, I know the ASE, the American Society of Civil Engineers, came out and said, 100% unambiguously, if you're the engineer of record, you have to verify every single change or you are completely responsible for anything

that happens as a result of that. It's on you. Just want to make sure we're clear about that. That was a change that came directly from that and from Gillum himself. Well, the buck has to stop with somebody. It was a situation where everybody was finger pointing and when you can point to a single decision that caused this and not like, well, it was sort of this and this and this. These things had, they not even had that T-dance. Eventually, they would have collapsed. They just weren't built correctly.

Yeah. It's, I saw that even the original design wouldn't have met code for holding up People not wouldn't have reached those killer Newton said it needed You got anything else. No, I got nothing else Big shout out to the people of Kansas City. Yeah, I hope to do a show there one day We did go to Lawrence, Kansas and St. Louis in the general area But we have not hit Kansas City yet, so we'll do that one day. Yes, one day we will for sure. And since Chuck just promised Kansas City we're going to come to a show, of course he unlocked listening mail.

I'm going to call this, just something a little lighter. I think we could use it. Yeah. Because we inadvertently, well, I'll just read it. Hey guys, been listening to the show for about six years. My first time writing in to highlight an ongoing mistake that is none the less hilarious. And I assume completely unintentional. During the 22 Halloween episode, Josh voiced one of the great characters in English literature megal in the tollhouse But in subsequent episodes when you guys

Namely Chuck tries to get Josh to do the voice He refers to him as Smeagle Smeagle of course is the Hobbit from the Lord of the Rings who's corrupted by the one ring and eventually transformed in the Gollum After hearing this I went back and re-list and to the 2022 Halloween episode again And I. And I can assure you that the toll house is even better second time around first. And now I can just imagine a mixture of Josh and Andy Circus narrating the dialogue of Smeagol Gollum as the Meekel character in question.

I almost didn't want to write in because of this to make you aware of the solar race error. Though I assume someone will eventually beat me to it. But not true Josh Bill's borough you were the first to write in we did get a couple of people that wrote in after you though that yeah he were firsties and Josh is from Madison Connecticut. Way to go Josh thanks for that thanks to everybody who wrote in to say the same thing because it is pretty hilarious. Maybe that's why

my meagles been off I've been accidentally doing smie hilarious. It's me going to be. Maybe that's why my meagle's been off. I've been accidentally doing smiegal, probably so. Well, we'll get to the bottom of it, everybody. I promise megal will be back someday, someday. And if you want to get in touch with Josh at All Did, you can send us an email to StuffPodcast. at iHeartRadio.com.

MUSIC Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, at www.applpodcasts.org Sometimes the pop culture we love just teens hits differently in retrospect. Maybe it's a tabloid story we couldn't get enough of or an illicit student teacher relationship on our favorite show. We're Suzy Banna-Karim and Jessica Bennett, posts of the new podcast in retrospect. Where each week we'll revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped us and probably you, to try to understand what it taught us about the world and our place in it. You're the first person that I've talked to about this for years and years.

Listen to In Retrospect on the I Heart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you find your favorite shows. Everyone in our country has a voice. It's something that says not just where you come from, but who you are. Welcome to MPR's Black Stories, Black Truths, a collection of podcasts and a celebration of the host and journalism who've always spoken truth to power. Our voices are as varied, nuanced, and dynamic as the Black experience, and stories should never be about us without us.

Find NPR Black Stories Black Trutes on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up? This is Big Long. Check out my podcast, It's Up There. Each and every Monday, It's Up There. Podcast brings a conversation for supporters and business leaders of the coach. From the podcast, business, music, and entertainment deals, we have an in-depth dialogue with a level of understanding for everyone. It's up there. Podcast sees through the smoking mirrors within the industry, while delivering a perspective that's one of a kind. Lab Crying, soaking, game with every episode. Listen to us up there podcast on the Black-O-Fake podcast network. I heart Radio L Apple Podcast or whatever you get your podcast.

See that sign? Employees only. That means keep out, buddy. It's just for us by-well employees. This is where we talk freely about all the stuff happening in the world. You can keep Meghan Markle for all I care, as long as I get to take Harry to a weekend in Vegas I'm happy. It's employees only! courtesy of Ron Howard, the new podcast from Imagine Audio, pretty fast in I Heart Media.

Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.