Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 4: Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse

Episode Date: November 13, 2019

Today @aliceavizandum, @donoteat1, @oldmananders0n, and special guest Kate Wagner from McMansion Hell discuss the 1981 Kansas City Hyatt Regency walkway collapse. Slides: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw2t0MOGnVc And we also talk about other things, including Estonian Ferries! Rem Koolhaas! Planes! Drinking on Planes! 11foot8! Vinyl siding! TERFs! go to kate's website and read it https://mcmansionhell.com/ she also has a patreon! https://www.patreon.com/mcmansionhell oh right listen to Trashfuture, it's good, folks https://trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/

Okay, let's let's let's start talking about disasters then So all right, I'm gonna start Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of well, there's your problem, which is the podcast with slides about engineering disasters I'm Justin Rosniak. I do not eat on the YouTubes and You know, I do this series as well as a series on urban planning and history My pronouns are he him Who's next?

Guess I'll go Yeah Liam Anderson I am old man Anderson on Twitter now With with the zero in there I Basically, I'm just a dick in do not eats mentions And I call people mean names and wait for Twitter to ban me instead of the Nazis Me next

Alice called Warkelling Alice have a zander month with her I also do a podcast called trash future and if we're doing pronouns She and I cannot stress this enough and we have a special guest today a special guest Yes My name is Kate Wagner I am the creator of McMansion hell my Twitter is at McMansion hell and I'm here because this is My favorite engineering disaster. That's a weird thing to say, but I think it's I think it's quite neat It's a good favor to have I think so. I mean, it's so it's so dark

There's just so many things We'll get into it we'll get into it so yes today's disaster is the Kansas City Hyatt Regency walkway collapse Okay, so this was a big hotel right as you can see the hotel is still there Yes, the tallest building in Missouri when they finished it in 1980, you know this big-ass hotel for their convention center There's a rotating restaurant on top because you know, of course there was It's very aesthetic. I like that. Just a big flat burger on top. Just slam down on top of this building. Yeah Yeah, it was built in I think the early or the late 1970s, so yeah, the the sky Restaurant was in full swing

Just just bring in pounds and pounds of hideous carpeting. Yeah, oh shit. Yeah with those bad 1970s swirly designs You can see in the second picture, you know a very nice 1970s sort of Modern lobby except there's some stuff on the floor that shouldn't be there. Oh my god That's one way of putting it. That's not God. Well, so I thought I'd start by sort of introducing people to how a building gets put up You can see I have a man in a hard hat here to emphasize this With with with watermarks on it because for artistic reasons

You could tell he's a supervisor because he's wearing a hard hat, but he's also wearing a suit and died. Yes That's how you know also the hard hat is very clean. This was every slide in engineering school When I was in school yeah when I was in school for acoustics like Also true acoustics is like sometimes engineering. It's mostly failure Speaking of failure. Here's here's how a building gets put up, right? So the first guy we have is the client the clients the guy with the money So the client says look I got some money I want a building and here's what I want and then they tell their concept to the architect, right?

Who's the next guy in line or girl or non-binary pal? Whatever So anyway, so maybe gives the architect some sketches or some vague plans of what they want, you know something like that So the architect then takes a look at what the client was describing instead of crap. That's the wrong So the architect says he looks at the plans that the client gives them or the concept and he says what the hell What are you thinking? Right, and then he has to go about turning the vague ideas of this real estate guy into a workable building And you know, there's some back and forth here, right?

You forgot about the architect in his like immense ego and I say his because it's usually his Unless it's Zaha Hadid and weird fascist opinions. Well, Zaha is dead and now is and now Zaha Hadid is also run by a man So F Wow Yeah, press F to pay respect also. I just speaking of gender. I realized I forgot to give my pronouns because are she her I Also forgot to give mine. I tried he had To pronoun checks. Yeah, I want to make the gamers mad here Yes, I want the YouTube comments to be real salty again So I can tell people to fucking cry about it, which was a great source of joy for me

Yeah, we just wrap this up and do a separate pronoun check for every minute of the video I think of this if it will piss off the the mad gamers in the engineering Disasters videos if that's the fucking thing you get upset about go offline go fucking hug a tree or something get the fuck out Etc. Etc. Dude, why would you put trees in danger like that the trees won't be harmed with the Lorax is armed But also I do agree. I agree that I agree that engineer should come in with nature more. Yes Yes, so so the architect is doing is doing ego things. He's like, well, what if we had a Not only do we have like a rotating restaurant

But it's also like in the form of an amorphous blob and we use a lot of big words stolen from philosophy But like not really connected to describe what that means and then anyways that gets valued engineered Down and now we've arrived to the third step. So yeah, we're at the third step where the architect sends the drawings to the engineer Or the several engineers, right? There's a bunch of sub-disciplines. There's a structures guy a foundation guy Heating ventilation an air conditioning guy. There's a plumbing guy an electrical guy You know, there's like half a dozen different engineers who have to get their hands on these plans to make the building work, right? Yeah, and they all love each other They work very well

Yeah, especially the acoustical engineer and the HVAC engineer like those guys love each other for sure and by that I mean, that's not true. These guys all look at the architects drawings and say what the fuck I think that's a bark that's not safe for work How am I supposed to route like cooling ducts through this weird curvy like sinewy thing that you've done? Did the the engineer goes back to the architects like you realize you need sprinklers, right? They ruin the lines of my building someone fires the acoustical engineer for being too expensive and that's why hotels are all terrible Yeah You know, it's not up actually up to code to have the hallways be like a Junji Ito

Faultline thing where you just fit the person into them with no space This is my hole it was made for me It was made for me and then it went through a series of revisions before being stamped It's just the hole. It's supposed to be made for you, but it's like a Lego guy So, you know, there's some more back-and-forth here between the various engineers the architect and the client You know the age, you know the structure guy as a complain to the HVAC guy who wants to cut a hole in an I-beam to run a duct through, you know the plumbing conflicts with each other blah blah blah and Eventually, you know the engineers sign off on

Something they put a stamp on it, right? This is the professional engineer stamp. It's very important What it basically says is that these drawings are right and if they're wrong you can send me to jail nice When you're licensed as a professional engineer, the state gives you a stamp except in New Jersey where they give you a crimper What is a crimper it like makes a physical indentation in the paper? Okay That's definitely official. Yeah, that sounds like New Jersey so

These these stamp drawings are sent out to the city for permitting And then inspectors, you know code enforcement looks at and these folks a lot of times are not engineers They're just sort of people who are there to look at it and say hmm. Well, there's a stamp on them and nothing looks obviously wrong So, you know, that's depending on the jurisdiction. Sometimes code enforcement and permitting is kind of you know, Lackadaisical Can't we cut some of this bureaucracy somehow, maybe we should just just skip permitting Steps out of it. Yeah, that's how McMansions are built I mean like residential was residential building codes are like way more lax than

Basically every other kind of building code. I mean single family residential not multi-family residential. Oh, yeah, you don't need architects or engineers on that at all And that's a grove house Several McMansion hell posts where they're just like balconies that are absolutely not to code in any way shape or form And it's like, yeah Seems risky, but okay the house I lived in When I was a teenager Was hilarious because it had a balcony that absolutely should not have been there like off my bedroom And you could feel like the carport move under you and it was fucking delirious

I loved it. I love suburban building codes See, this is the thing you don't get that kind of Innovation and excitement when you have a strong regulatory thing. It's very boring Not having like the floor move under you. You'd be surprised how many architects have made this argument We need to get rid of building codes, they're restricting my creativity Well a fun fact about building codes that before we go is that I think oh There's like a big criticism of building codes that comes from a fact that like a lot of building codes are Put together by experts that are really just like people from like, you know, like insulation companies and stuff who have a

Vested interest. There's like lots of conflict of input interests and how building codes are sort of come together and That's that's a that's a big criticism Your house has to be 60% insulation by weight Framming it into the under the stairs Dude, that's I wish that were my house just because you know, then my dog wouldn't bark at like everyone who like goes up the stairs Grover house was actually a very wisely built building. It was a architectural freedom. I like that That's like that. We're now we're at the contractor Yes, so now we've sent we're sending the drawings to the contractor, right from the engineer and the architects

And the contractors take a look at the drawings and they say fucking hell These chuckle fucks got damn more on idiot assholes That was you last night watching the world series. I enjoyed that wait who won the world series Oh wait, it's still going still going. It's game one. That's one Fuck the gnats. Dude. I'm in dc. I can't say that or else police will come into my house and like shoot me and my dog No, it'll be it'll be a defense department contractor. It'll be just some booze. Alan Hamilton. Fuck You know complaining that you're hurting his feelings as he's shooting your dog. There's the guy on lanyards. Yeah Just wax you with the lanyard until you tell your dad how impressive is that he has one as he's beating you to death

Yeah, exactly. Oh my god So then the contractor sends some drawing out to their subcontractors, right and the subcontractors say what the fuck Jesus christ They they make some modifications and and they send back what are called shop drawings Which shows what they can build and what they intend to build Right because a lot of times a problem with architects and engineers Designing something is that sometimes, you know, the design is very nice. But can you actually build it? You know, manufacturer ability is a major concern. If you if you have a nice design

It doesn't matter if you can't actually build it anyway, so they send back shop drawings to the engineers and architects and They either sign off on it or they say no, you dumb idiot We have to do it this way and then there's you know, some back and forth here until Someone there's some consensus that we come to after that, of course We get to labor and they're the people who are actually building the thing And you know, they they probably have the most experience with building stuff because they actually do build the stuff And they complain about all the boneheaded decisions that were made in the previous

Uh various parts And they're the least able to make changes, of course, because you know, they're just labor That they're they're just hissing and a girder with a hammer for 16 hours a day. Like why would they know anything about girders? They just work with that exactly their entire life They're just doing the socialist realist art style thing Where you're just hitting the thing with the other thing until a building happens. Is that not how that works? Yes, there's just a bunch of guys going with hammers and there's a big cloud of smoke

And then and then they leave and the building's there. Yeah, this is this is how building works It's like in cartoons Yeah, you definitely don't end up with like one i-beam with a bunch of hammer dents in it just sitting in the dirt That's how you know, it's tough. That's true. There's like a a child like walking over the i-beams as the crane swings it around, you know It's all just it's all just loony tunes like every construction site is actually just like uh one extended wily coyote gag That's not how it happens. It's a it's a load bearing painted on whole So then the building gets built

And then the architects and engineers come back and they do the as-built drawings To show what they actually built versus what the plan said um And keep in mind Everyone's been meddling in this at every stage of the process, especially the client who's you know probably coming in and saying Well, I don't understand why we couldn't have a floating orb of lava like that was my vision Right there in my rotating restaurant Yes

You just cook the food on it Oh hell yeah Until you know, it's fancy when you have to cook your own damn food It's like a fondue. You just like have a long fork and you like hold the food out towards the orb of lava Why can't we just have a giant fire pit inside? It's it's cozy. It's fall y'all What what what do you mean? I need ventilation over my fire pit carbon monoxide. What's that? That would conflict with my vision It's not going to be a lethal smoke inhalation nine times out of ten

Statistically everything is fine. Oh my god. The the lesson here is that it's a goddamn miracle anything gets built at all That's true And if it's government contracting like of the clients that government everything's 10 times worse Oh, yeah, did my dad used to be a uh, he used to do inventory for uh, medical equipment for army hospitals Like that was his job like truly like a boring Government job in like every way shape or form But he would like have all these stories about like how like screws and stuff would be like nine dollars And like basically like everything everyone just like price gouges the government and it turned him into a libertarian

The seven hundred dollar shower curtain kind of yeah, exactly Five hundred dollar hammer It's the best hammer. So That better be a good hammer It was not a good hammer. The west wing did a a scene trying to rebut this We're like, I think it might even have been christian slater or something playing some navy It's like the reason why we need this Seven thousand dollar ashtray is because need like hits it with a with a hammer or something or a paper weight

And it like fractures cleanly into two pieces and it's like so it doesn't blind everybody when it gets shattered It was already weird the west wing was a weird show and I never watched it and I'm like truly blessed Yeah, you are and it's it's like that's it's it's a weird choice to have infiltrated the brains of like All of these lanyard guys who are coming to shoot Kate's dog He's sitting right next to me and he's like oh, I want to bark so badly So here's what the lobby of the Hyatt Regency, which is what we're talking about which I think it's like when it was finished Yeah, it's pretty cool. I like it a lot. Who's the finished dude who does all the circles too many vowels in his name sarinan Well, steven hall is like the guy now who does the circles

Are you thinking of are you thinking of there's like two famous finished dudes? There's like alvar alto and aro sarinan Yeah, I'm thinking of like a composite finished dude with a lot of vowels. So yeah I think I think it's sarinan, but whatever I think I mean that that that circle reminds me of louis conne who Who did the that that one library? That I'm forgetting them. Oh god. I'm so bad. Okay Exeter exeter library exeter library. Thank you. Okay. I was also going to say lou conne Uh, who was the architect for this? I'm gonna do the way right now. I actually don't know

I thought it was just some generic architecture firm, but they weren't the ones at fault So like no one remembers them So focus on these two walkways up here Or there's one up here. There's one down here the one in the middle, which is most visible doesn't matter They they branded these sky walks, right? Um And I I feel like we can kind of close the file on this right now It was edward lairby barns. Who was a important, uh, he was an important, uh modern late modern

But we can I I I feel like we can close the file on this because clearly we have a clear cause here and it's, um Man's hubris towards god because walking in the sky is what god does and this is like the tower of babble And as such, you know, the man is being viciously punished for his hubris with torments and calamity This is truly like them. This is truly like the the uh, this The lesson of like late modern architecture in general. I think yeah, it is it is Do not try and usurp god with your fancy sky walks Because that way only ruin uh awaits you god is here to make your buildings leak Yeah, that that was something that uh back when I worked at an engineering firm one of my co-workers was like

You know, you really want to impress me if you're an architect design a building that doesn't leak They can't do it I thought you were doing I thought you were doing the religious thing still and being like you want to impress me build a building That will reach the heaven itself and unite every spoken language They also can't do that. No, that's true But if they did it would leak. Yes, absolutely Without a doubt undoubtedly yes

So these sky walks up here, which are in front of god Um Are suspended by Tyrods right that come down from the ceiling And they meet and then they are fastened into A pair of sea channels and then a second tyron extends to the lower one, right? Okay, so there's a reason for this which was bad. All right. So here's a diagram of that actual assembly

You can see there's p P is the load, right? Dude loads on these nuts Oh You pee on the nut. Yeah. He is stored in the balls. Oh P is stored in the nuts Oh Yes So

This is the shop drawing phase of the process, right? The original design was by jack D. Gillam and associates. They're engineers, right? Any idea is the the the beams that are holding up the skywalk are made of two sea channels, right? Which are welded together? Okay, and the original idea was to have the weld on the sides, but that got moved to the top. I'm not sure why Um, and then the tyrods Which are going to hold the bridge up We're going to be continuous through the pair of sea channels Uh from this would be the fourth floor walkway

And then they'd go all the way down to the second floor walkway, right? Yeah. So you just have one long rod, right? Yes Now as this was designed, this would actually only be able to support 60 percent of the weight that was required by the code But this was a preliminary sketch at this point. No one had done any math on it, right? And they send this preliminary sketch to their contractor haven steel And haven steel takes one look at and says these chuckle fox E morons Because in order to get this nut up the tyrod you would need to screw it on a continuously threaded rod

up two stories To get to where it needed to be Right, there's one guy climbing a ladder with a wrench. Yeah, because they said look, uh You we shouldn't do it this way. This is stupid. We should have you know We should separate into two rods, right? So we don't have to thread so much of it. We can get this built more quickly or less chance of damaging the tyrod Uh threading when they're putting up the other bridge because you know You might you might wind up in a situation where you can't screw the nut all the way up the tyrod because you

screwed up some threading on this continuous 40-foot threaded rod Just the inanimate carbon rod we love it. Yes The thing is the new design they came up with and this was So what they sent over was like a sketch on like a piece of paper And what they got back was also a sketch on a piece of paper neither of these were supposed to be final designs the um The new design resulted in the rod

The the the load from the lode the the load from the rod Which is p right goes into The para c channels, right? And then it has to you know go around and then instead of this one nut Uh supporting the weight of just the one skywalk. It's now supporting the weight of two skywalks So before It has you know 60 of the strength required by the code Now it has 30 of the strength that's required by the code

That doesn't seem ideal. No Beyond that of course because they move the weld from the sides to the top The hole which this rod is going through goes directly through the weld and all this weight is applied directly at the weld Which is the weakest part of this particular cross section, right? And we still don't know why they move the weld to the top. It could have been anything. It could have been the aesthetic I I would suspect that was probably it because I think these sides were you don't want to have like bare welds Yeah, yeah, exactly part of the story is that uh design changes

Or perhaps not these but at least some design changes were just straight up confirmed over the phone with nobody checking documentations or like Calculations or anything like that. So that's I mean given how Difficult it is to organize a podcast with a slideshow over the phone and we have a visual Like we have a visual element to refer to doing this with just audio and but like there's actual maths involved and you know You have to actually build the thing that's impossible. Yeah, I mean it's it I I don't know when I when I worked at an engineering firm There was a very strong emphasis in doing things over the phone

And I was always like why don't we send an email so we can refer back to what we said But no, we got to do everything over the phone. I never understood it This design is accepted Which they never did math on the preliminary design and then they finalized the design based on something they never really looked at And they build the damn thing nice Yeah, this is friday july 17th 1981. There's a tea dance right A tea dance 1940s style tea dancing competition. Hell. Yeah, buddy. I don't know what any of that is It sounds awful like even before the whole you know disaster park

I I mean, yeah, I mean presumably disaster was that the dance existed in the first place Yeah, this is why you should never dance mm-hmm True, but also like I mean tea dancing. I don't know what it is, but it sounds like some rigonair a bullshit to me Yeah, no, I'm probably offending further. I'm sorry. Maybe if tea dancing is a legitimate form of art that's uh Well known to these here reviewers, but I don't think that the the dance The aesthetic qualities of the dance or what's important here No, but I'm saying it sets the scene if it's already like a

Tartarus in there before The thing like fails then, you know, how much you're gonna have a bunch of people moving all over the place Like sending all of their like vibrations through this particularly vulnerable Vibe check. Yeah. Yeah, vibe. Dude. I'm just gonna refer to like all of acoustics as vibe check now So for whatever reason this tea dance is pretty popular there's 600 1600 people who attend the tea dance on this particular night Nothing to do in Kansas. Have you been to Missouri? No, there's not I I love to go to Kansas City and just like merge across 27 lanes of like at a mile long freeway

Into a parking lot retrieve my mozzarella star tack from my belt holster and just want to fucking kill myself There's uh, there's the world war one museum there, which is pretty interesting and that's all I've got I've been to the airport. Hmm. Hmm. Was there a tea dance? No Uh, well missing out on the like the integral culture, I guess. That's why you lived This is truly some coastal need is I'm going on here people um final destination the tea dance just like pursues you I lived in york, Pennsylvania. I am entitled to call other places bad That's what I say to people like your coastal elite. It's like I'm from like more county, North Carolina

Why I I have to do some I have to get some shots in here at America to make up for the pacer stuff on the last episode Because I got a bunch of annoyed Northern english people being like no, we love these horrible rusty shitty trains So I have to like reassert myself There were a lot of pacer defenders in the comments. I was surprised a stock home syndrome, honestly Usually I'm the one to defend like late modern architecture being like actually it was great The whole thing was like awesome. It was the best period of architecture ever, but like I feel like there's no uh

Defending the higher agency After the collapse, it's like don't you mean rolling stock home syndrome, Alice? Thank you, I like it. Yeah Yeah, so the tea dance, uh, there's there's 1600 people in the lobby There's 40 people on the second floor walkway and 16 to 20 on the fourth floor walkway You know, that's bad when there's a range Yes That's somebody going through and counting spoonfuls of person and being like well

There was also a by volume a 35th high school reunion there The same night you just know that because high school reunion to that fraught somebody was wishing for something like that to happen I thought they had like carry magical powers You know, you're having a conversation with someone much more successful than you and you say something Like you just lie. You don't even know why you do it But you say yeah, I actually invented the post it and you just think to yourself God can something happen to like take All of the heat off of me in this thing and then the next thing you know

The high at re you didn't see walkway collapsed and saved you from yeah So that guy's never going to ask you about your what you've been up to the past 35 years again. So it's like it's like yeah If I ever I don't know I'd ever go to my high school reunion But they're like yeah, so what do you do and it's like, uh, I'm like the same like loser But I have lots of followers on twitter now It's like yeah, it's it's like I still don't like leave my house And yeah, the the the thing collapses the moment after I've mentioned twitter by accident and somebody asks me. Oh, hey, what's your twitter? Oh, yes. Thank you

Yep, people are like, oh, I love your tweets and I'm like in the middle of saying. Oh, I'm sorry and then this happens Yeah Anyway, everyone's uh complaining About or everyone's trying to impress each other because apparently, you know, this is uh high school reunion I didn't know this was part of it. So I'm now improvising Well, they they were all doing like reagan stuff or 81 is reagan, right? Yeah Yes, yeah, so so they're all doing like supply side economics to each other and like comparing business cards Everyone's in marketing nature

Everyone's in marketing everyone has those like shirts with the color that's a different color from the like The actual shirt. Yeah, it's atrocious. Suddenly the fourth floor walkway drops several inches Sounds bad. Yeah, not supposed to do that. And then that fucker falls all the way down Pancakes onto the second floor walkway Which also falls on the ground and that immediately murders 114 people and injures 216 more Yikes, I would like to counter that 111 people died that night

Uh, and then three more people died weeks and months later. That's how we got to 114 So there are three people who who stood on and then cherry. Yeah, uh, okay. Okay The rescue operation takes 14 hours, right? They have to like bring cranes in through the windows and stuff and they gotta They gotta bring in people with jackhammers I actually know a little bit about the the medical side of this and they were doing like amputations With chainsaws. Yeah Yeah

It's not it's not great folks. We don't we don't like to see it. It's very very bad. The sprinkler system ruptured Oh, and then so people almost drowned who are like trapped. Yeah, this keeps happening Why do we even have sprinklers dude because of fire case there's a fire? No, we you should have one if we're gonna have building collapses No sprinklers or if we're gonna have sprinklers no building collapses But you can't do both because this is twice now I've had to confront the idea of somebody being trapped in rubble drowning in the fire suppression system And I don't like doing it. So just pick one

It seems to be a fairly common thing now that you wouldn't think about So this is the largest death toll from the united states building collapse until 9 11 I mean at least it inspired fewer terrible movies. I don't think I've seen any movies about this. Yeah Did I would absolutely watch like a four-hour documentary about this? Yeah, but like Yeah, but it wouldn't be a documentary you would get like nicolas cage as I don't know like a building inspector Or like a fire chief or something and it would be terrible extremely loud and incredibly crushed Oh Yeah, people don't actually talk about this, but the revolving restaurant was a franchise of windows on the world

So anyways, this is one of those pairs of sea channels, right? Oh, that's how it's supposed to look, right? Yeah, it's not it's not supposed to look like that. Absolutely destroyed The guilty mood. This is the mood. This is the mood. Yes. Here's here's where the nut with 2p on it Sheared straight through the sea channels So the fourth floor failed first because of the excess of load and then pancaked on to the second level, which you know, obviously also failed And you know, this is pretty quickly discovered in the investigation to have been the major cause Now as a result of this Jack D. Gillam and associates were acquitted of all criminal liability

Awesome. Uh, yes The guy who accepted the plan over the phone was stripped of his professional engineering license They literally they took a stamp away. Yeah, they took a stamp away It canceled. I mean, it would have been worse if it was in new jersey because then they would have had to have taken his crimper away Uh, yes, absolutely canceled and the company lost his license to practice in Missouri, Kansas and texas So did you just move probably just doing just doing the monorail bit from the simpsons But selling sky walks and I don't know a downstate Illinois or something. I like that the

initial drawings uh by Gillam Uh, we're only preliminary, but haven steel took them and ran with them as finalized drawings and just like nobody checked Just up and down that whole like six stage Uh process we went through and I'd be was like Yeah, did we actually do math on this or out? Nobody get you know, not to be too spooky here, but like, you know, imagine just like the sheer bureaucracy of like a for example, like Uh, like a hundred story skyscraper

Mm-hmm Like when when you said not to not to be spooky. I was thinking we were gonna go back to like mothman or cryptids Do they have cryptids in Kansas City? I mean bureaucracy is the real cryptid. Hmm. That's true. I mean, it's what killed the soviet union Yes, hot take. Sorry. I mean, we can't rule out mothman involvement there, but Ronald Reagan was the cryptid here Truly a cryptid it don't don't don't like put Ronald Reagan in the same Uh in the same camp as like bigfoot who is an icon of queer culture Is Ronald Reagan seen on like a a super eight skulking towards the nuts to like loosen them? Oh my god

Can we blame this can we blame this on neoliberalism? It's I'm like I I think this is bureaucracy like gone wrong. Oh, no, I can I can argue with that because so on october 14th 1979 This is a year before the walkways collapsed while the hotel is still reconstruction 2700 square feet of the atrium roof collapsed because one of the roof connections at the north end of the atrium failed in testimony The engineering design team stated that on three separate occasions they requested on-site project representation during the construction phase However, these requests are not acted on by the owner Due to additional costs of providing on-site inspection

And it's worth noting that that owner was a subsidiary of hallmark I kid you not I love to get a like a Crush to death with a heart of other people with like so sorry about your Yeah, but they must do they make money coming and going on that cause they get Sorry for your loss that I yeah, exactly. That's my fault. Yes I mean you have to think about it this way like the 80s were really this time historically of like insane corporate mergers That like didn't make any sense

Mm-hmm. Yeah, we're like hallmark just owns a stadium now. Yeah, exactly like I mean, this was just so common and then what's funny is like by the 2000s like all of these things just kind of like broke back apart again Every there was just like a mergers and acquisitions like fever And I think like yeah, I mean I so yeah negligence Place place definitely plays a part and I feel like negligence is truly Uh, like the contributing factor to like 90 of engineering disasters And someone somewhere is like being negligent, but it's like It just makes you wonder like, you know

A lot of buildings are constructed and a lot of them are rather complex buildings Uh, and somehow, you know, they all manage to stay together for the most part leaks aside But then it only takes like one tiny mistake to just like cause a massive tragedy Yeah, what it's it's the swiss cheese thing, right? Like you have to have You can be negligent. There's probably a million of these things where there's just absolute Equivalent negligence and it just gets caught by the safety factor or just luck or whatever Uh, but sometimes all of these things just line up. Yeah, it's like the bowing thing like just basically like everyone involves like screwed up Uh, or like let's covering it up or something in this case

It feels like more a little bit more like a little more like an accident where it's just like Oh, we just like didn't look over the plans or something rather than like a coordinated like effort to just like, you know Is serve regulation or something? Uh There's like I feel like there's like a little bit of like bad luck involved in this one Negligence and bad luck are very powerful combination So

In the end, uh, the crown center corporation subsidiary at the hallmark corporation paid out 140 million dollars to victims That's very little Well, you know, it's the 80s 100, uh, a dollar was worse one Yes, that's true. 334 million as of last year The candy bar cost a nickel back then and it was bigger back in my day. So that's what like 3 million ish per person. I mean, I don't get me wrong. I'm not I wouldn't turn down 3 million dollars But like I mean you'd be dead You can count a million on one hand, Alice

Yeah, at the same time at the at the same time I would also prefer not to be crushed by a skywalk, right? Yes. That would be my preference indeed So jack gillam himself, you know, who is in charge of jack gillam and associates and who you know engineer a record on the project You know, he hit the conference circuit and Yeah, started talking about, you know, how this could have been this horrible tragedy Could have been prevented and what we did wrong so on and so forth. So, you know, he He came out pretty good This is like a thing like these guys just go on to teach like engineering ethics courses

Like didn't that happen to the guy who did like the city core building? That sounds about right. I mean engineering ethics is a joke. This might be why we can we can we can model this And we can say that in this case a skywalk is a machine designed to turn 114 people into a TED talk That's neoliberalism You just to turn that many people into a TED talk you have to compress them quite finely But it's really good at that God God's plan for some of us is to be fodder fodder for a TED talk

I already gave a TED talk and I just like do not recommend it Uh, they basically just like drill you on how to be more corporate and like if they're you're not allowed any spontaneity whatsoever And it's like extremely hard to have like ADHD and give a TED talk It's like it goes against like your very nature, which is just like wandering speech going nowhere for hours But that's suited perfectly to podcasting. So absolutely One one of these days. I'm just gonna pivot to the cat to podcasting TED talks ableist cancelled. Yes Barely do any pronoun checks let alone every minute like we do

Suck my ass gamers. Yes Ah That's right The building was still good. So they repaired the lobby and the hotel operates today as the Sheridan Kansas City Hotel At Crown Center. Here's what it looks like hotels being at things by the way. I don't know why That is a sick Art thing. I I can't articulate why exactly. I just know lots of strings. I don't like it No, this is like when when places call themselves like the lofts at

Oh, no, fuck you. Just come up with a new name. They're like not loft. They're not lofts They're like never loft is new construction. They're never lofts like they're never in like the loft form They're always just like like the shittiest Just a ground floor loft There's no lofts Dude lofts are so like actual lofts are sick like they're not very like efficient But they're actually sick and we should like do them more because I think lofts are sick But everyone just called you appropriate to name loft

Just a loft being like this is my culture not a costume like and no and Taylor loft is like not even a loft I hate it. They're not loft It's only a loft if it comes from the like reclaimed industrial warehouse at region of france. Otherwise, it's just a sparkling apartment didn't know it's a loft is like I think technically like a loft is is like a A two-story apartment that is enclosed in a single volume So that you have like either like a platform or like a Sort of balcony feature that you like that serves like a

Like a second room like a like a little room of its own or something um, I think that that's technically the The law what a loft is But also like yeah the the post-industrial thing like those are usually also lofts Because like they have huge internal volumes and there's like space for like sort of like vertical constructions inside of them Or just like having really tall ceilings these like the lofts at riverbrook or whatever like, you know off the highway like you know

off of like the jersey turnpike or whatever like five miles from Manhattan are just like Terrible like the ceilings are like eight feet tall uh Like everything is like made a particle board It's a reverse frank Lloyd Wright Everything is like very shoddy, but extremely tall instead of very solid and like very low down I appreciate frank Lloyd Wright as a short person Hmm short king

Yes, that's right. We should also uh, not forget that uh The the because 65 tons of walkways and humans had collapsed They had to use cranes to move them like breaking essentially into the hotel in order to move the uh, the big ass collapsed walkways And uh, don't forget that rescuers had to dismember bodies to get to victims who might still be alive So yeah, this is pretty much a masterclass on how to not fucking build a building Yeah, how to traumatize a bunch of firefighters um

Yeah, great High school was bad enough and now they're just retraumatized Yes Just the the firefighter dalmatians are just like uh therapy dogs I just refuse to go on any walkway inside a building now like after reading about this I think I first read about it when I was in college or something because like list of like engineering or structural engineering Disasters is like my favorite Wikipedia page. I like have this bad habit of like reading about like lots of death Like things that like kills a lot of people. I'm like that's sick. I want to read about that

Not to not to not to spoil a future episode, but I'm that for a roll-on roll-off ferries Never get a fairy. Oh, yes. Never ever get on a ferry ever I don't drive so like there's no point for me to get on a ferry What if you have to cross like Champlain, Kate? Huh? Whatever? No, you didn't get eaten by a champy. Just just go around the water. Nope. Nope. Had to take a ferry Those are the rules. How do you get to newfoundland then? I don't fly Yeah, I I do not go to newfoundland then Yeah, that sucks. I want to go

Should get it's very lovely. Yeah I want to go. I want to meet the adorable dogs that like swimming and stuff But on the other hand, I also don't want to drown in like freezing water banging on a porthole of a ferry so like I would like to point out that when uh, do not eat I did take the ferry back from newfoundland to Nova Scotia. It was a 16-hour boat ride And our cabin had no windows Not at all. So like our strategy in its entirety was to get super drunk So that if we went down in the middle of the night, at least it would bother us so much

Yeah, and that that way you have a chance. It was a genuine X Estonian ferry as well. Christ And the super fast nine That is a good strategy because you might have the miraculous drunken survival thing Where you just like float free of the wreckage somehow and you're just like I feel fine. That was my that was my logic. Hmm. There was no lifeboat drill. Nope. There was not I had to memorize how to get to the lifeboats. Anyway, so uh, lessons from this engineering disaster Uh, do the fucking math. Yeah

Matt math good. Not just on the phone. Yeah, I think that's math good. Should be a given phone bad email goods sometimes uh, skywalks Bad a front to god a front to god bad probably couldn't email back then they probably have to fax They like don't do skywalks that much anymore. I don't think like when is the last time anyone has seen a building with like Like a huge like atrium volume with a skywalk. Like when was the last time a building like that was built Feel like this traumatized like everybody

Yeah, they they don't like really even do like huge atrium's anymore because It's like god. I mean just look at that. Look at the slide because john portman died. Yeah, that's right. John portman did die Yeah, john portman not an architect according to rem cool house. Okay, whatever Rem cool house not a theorist according to k waxer He he thinks he's he thinks he's hot shit just because his name is cool house. I mean, yeah, I mean that is pretty sick let's be real here like If I my last name was cool house, I would absolutely become an architect I'm gonna change my I'm gonna change my name to call a house

Did rem rem? Okay, but like my feelings on rem is that like rem is always just like on a seesaw of like good and bad Like there's good rem and then he like then there's like it's inevitable that he's gonna fall back to earth and become bad Rem and then just as soon he's gonna spring back up and become good rem. This is like the entire He's Harvey Dent. He flips to like a very Very aesthetic coin and whichever one it lands on that's his personality to get into country houses now and I'm like rem calm down Rem cool house dude That's a twitter handle. I mean, I think overall like I like rem More than his contemporaries like he's definitely better

like he then You know like zaha for example, uh in terms of like written output. I mean now. Yeah Well, he was always better as a theorist, uh He I mean, I think he's had some his sense of necessary things Things maybe we didn't want to hear but like I mean he like will never live up to like his work from like before the 21st century like

SML XL was like the last thing that like he did that I thought was like really interesting junk space was good because It like reinforces that I hate airports Like that made me feel vindicated It's like yeah, the airport actually sucks But it's funny like, you know after I got into like, you know reading about aviation Now I kind of like the airport because you get to watch the planes and stuff and stuff. Oh, that's this kind of plane That's like so cool Yeah, but the actual building is just that all terrible box. Yeah

Did airports are just like climate change machines just like I I like everything about airplanes except the actual experience I agree Hard same I hate flying I was on a crj 200 from Philly to Montreal and I'd been on some miserable flights, but like For mile traveled like that was far away the most miserable fucking flight I've ever been on Local like British Airways to Scotland occasionally still does a turboprop and that's got it got it. Yeah fun time

No way. I would never I flew from there. I've seen enough episodes of air disaster so like not turboprop it Turboprops are fun if by fun you mean it's like a regular plane, but the whole time Like an hour it's great I was I was on the the Celtic FC Uh, Celtic FC, whichever express from Dublin to Glasgow Which is like 45 minutes in the air the two fans sitting in front of us

Asked me and my dad if we would buy their beers And we did and then they gave us money for their beers because you were only allowed to order two beers on this half an hour flight That's my people. Yeah Uh, come on your boys in green Dude, that's me because I like I'm like a periodic flight drinker Like the second that's the steward is like comes out. I'm like, yo come here. I need like three gin and tonics And the best part is like on lustanza like on like over over the sea flights. Like they're free and then

Like it's either I want three gin and tonics or I'm like taking like three like unisoms and I'm like just gonna like pass out I try and get about 17 beers in before I get on the plane and have 34 more on the plane I still can't sleep. Yeah, I I took a flight from From Tel Aviv to JFK Uh, I went on birthright because I'm a horrible human being Sorry because cancel me in the comments or whatever But uh, yeah, it was 14 hours in a fucking aisle seat because my compatriot had abandoned me So the stewardess is coming over

Like to her credit very consistently and I just like Wine drunk like somewhere over the Atlantic like absolutely the most miserable version of myself And I'm still just like I hope this fucking plane goes down and it's just over I mean, that's that's you being uncancelled. That's your penance for doing birthright Is that you have to get the was it l l or do you fly american? Uh, I flew l l well again doubly miserable Did you know that l l is spanish and arabic for the the Thank you razz

I uh, it was so funny too because like uh, not to not to insult my jewish heritage But like what kind of 14 hour flight sheeps out on like the multimedia screens I was just like, you know what? Stereotypes exist for a reason like Whoa, whoa, whoa Hey Ah shit, we're getting cancelled Fuck god damn it, you know, I

Everyone's like dude like I've had like 13 people like ask me about like youtubers that are like in conflict or whatever And I'm like, yo like no offense to to Justin, but like I just don't watch youtube like my youtube My youtube history is like It's just like 14 hours of music or like k-mart commercial 1994 I ended up watching like an hours worth of trucks crashing into that low bridge Okay, so i'm from north carolina and this is like a legend in like all of north Dude the bridge dude 11 foot 8 dot com dude They're moving it. They're ruining a legend a legend in north carolina

Just like forever like you like grow up with the someone shows you like 11 foot 8 dot net at 11 foot 8 dot com or whatever it is Uh and like when you're like in middle school and Like someone I will show it to you again like it all like people can't like talk about it at parties Like people like you'll have you seen that bridge that like everyone gets trapped under like a bunch of idiots and everyone's and it's like extremely It's just like extremely funny to watch it's like I mean granted like I went to like music school and like everyone was like weird and like would be into like watching like trucks Crash into it. Yeah, but even even never not funny

I I I say this like anybody who's hearing this isn't but like an hour into watching a youtube channel about like uh Engineering so they're already nerds, but it is more satisfying than it sounds even Uh, there's something really quite zen about watching this bridge just fucking Peel the top off of the truck. It's great They have all the flashing lights and shit and you're just yeah, this is punishment for man's arrogance I know Do you know if like if there is a god not saying that there is a reason but like You know, he definitely created the bridge just to be like wall

It's as as revenge for the skywalks. Yeah, you thought now it will bring you back down to earth again That's not law though. That is not law. I want to I want to I want to say that the skywalks are not law No, but that they are the bridge Except for people who are dumb enough to drive under it And that's law Yes, so sky skywalks bad bridge good Flying bad flying bad fairies bad very bad fairies good depending on the day

Yeah, I'm going with fairy good. Yeah, you're both wrong paces bad Uh car bad train good pace in all withstanding Uh Yeah, do the math do the math Do add add add up the numbers do do the stand if you're gonna you're gonna build a building Please do the math on that building make sure it's not not 60 percent not 30 percent But 100 up to code please. Yeah, I don't don't put the plastics. Maybe 110 percent redundancy Don't put the plastic siding from lows up and then immediately grill against it

Yeah Classic dude vinyl siding is truly Like it'll just warp just from being in the sun Like my parents I've like had to replace some on their house just because like it's this part of Of the house that faces the sun and like over the years it just like kind of warped. I mean granted it took 20 years, but also like Hmm much like the joker it gets twisted after a while. Oh my god Yeah, I still haven't seen the joker. You don't need to I've heard like I haven't seen either. I've heard that it's good I've heard that it's bad. I've heard that it's smart. I've heard that it's dumb

It's like, you know, I truly like don't know what to believe now. So I think I just have to go see it for myself Don't worry. I'll wear a bulletproof vest All right, we're we're about an hour into a thing. I thought was gonna be about 30 minutes I'm gonna try and wrap up here You accidentally have 30 of the code length of a youtube video Okay, so uh Anyway, uh do the math uh next week, of course, we're gonna cover the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse That's gonna be a great episode. I can't wait. It's gonna be fantastic. Yeah

um And I guess uh, that's the end of the episode anyone got anything to pitch before you go Uh, listen to trash future available wherever podcasts are sold That's it. That was that was my pitch read mcmanchinhell.com. Thank you Uh, yeah, follow me on twitter for weird retweets of gross national security people And then get real mad. Oh and DM me uh, if you're a turf And you want to get uh, do you want to get real mad at my dms?

And then get mad again when I put around the yeah, so I just oh that did happen. Yeah I uh, apparently because I said that crimes against turfs aren't crimes. I'm a violent male And I guess I've just beaten every, uh, female identifying person I've ever met. So sorry about that folks That's okay because turfs aren't people. That's what I said Let's just do another pronoun check and just fade the audio down as we do that Keyham. Oh, yes. Liam Anderson. Keyham. Suck it nerds Uh, Justin Rosnack. Keyham. Uh, Alice Cordwell Kelly. She, her Kate Wagner. She, her

I'm sorry for everything I've ever said