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0:01
Welcome to stuff you should know, a production
0:04
of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:12
So I'm Josh and there's Chuck and it's
0:15
just the two of us and we're
0:17
gonna do just fine.
0:18
I have a good feeling because this is
0:20
stuff you should know. We've been at it for
0:22
decades now.
0:25
Not decades, well, in different
0:27
decades.
0:28
Right, that's how people get you. Yeah,
0:31
they say stuff like that.
0:33
That's right, Big CoA for this
0:35
one. It is about a very gruesome
0:37
tragedy that
0:40
we're gonna detail, and we're gonna talk
0:42
about a little bit of the gruesome stuff, but not
0:45
get to you know, detailed,
0:48
because it was a terrible tragedy. But we
0:50
just want to alert listeners, especially
0:53
our younger listeners, that some of this stuff is pretty
0:55
terrible. That is the events of
0:58
the High Regency Hotel in Kansas
1:00
City, Missouri in nineteen eighty one.
1:02
Yeah, and that was
1:05
just one year after that hotel opened.
1:07
Right, that's right.
1:09
This is the High Regency, a forty
1:12
five story, seven hundred room
1:14
hotel that opened in July of nineteen eighty
1:17
It was a part of a big suite a
1:20
complex called the Crown
1:22
Center. Huh Yeah, the
1:24
Crown Center complex, and
1:26
it had retail, had housing, all kinds of stuff
1:29
owned by the Hallmark Corporation.
1:31
That's where the Crown came from. Because
1:33
remember if you turn a Hallmark card over sometimes
1:35
it says Crown.
1:37
Well then their logo is a Crown.
1:39
Oh yeah, that too. But
1:41
this hotel, Chuck.
1:42
If you go back and look at pictures of it pre
1:45
disaster, it was magnificent.
1:47
Like if you looked up, you would see that there was
1:49
a high hall a
1:51
walkway right over your head. And
1:54
that was actually one of three that were kind of like
1:56
the signature design of this
1:58
atrium at the High Regions see Kansas
2:00
City.
2:01
That's right.
2:02
And like we said, this thing had been open
2:05
for about a year when the collapse
2:08
tragedy occurred. During one
2:10
of their they were hosting these weekend tea
2:13
dances, which apparently were very
2:15
popular in town. It was sort of an antiquated
2:18
old school thing that they did, but the people
2:20
of Kansas City ate it up and they were
2:22
just growing bigger and bigger with every weekend.
2:25
And on this particular weekend they
2:28
had, you know, as they did, they had a live
2:30
band playing, and I saw anywhere
2:33
from I
2:35
saw a thousand people in different places. This is
2:37
one of those things where like every time
2:39
you see a different
2:41
video, you'll get different numbers
2:44
and different things, and these
2:46
can be a little frustrating sometimes. But at
2:48
least a thousand, yeah, and maybe as many as
2:50
two thousand people there hanging
2:53
out, partying and dancing in the lobby.
2:55
Yeah.
2:55
I mean, if you see there's
2:57
footage of it, because I think one of the local
3:00
TV stations was doing a human interest piece
3:02
on how popular these this dance
3:04
had becomes Friday night dance, and
3:07
that place was packed with
3:09
people, not just in the atrium on
3:11
the floor, but also up at the terrace restaurant and
3:13
on those three walkways that
3:15
span the entire length
3:18
of the atrium from one side to another
3:20
on the second, third, and fourth floors.
3:23
So there was a ton of people. And the number
3:25
I most commonly saw was fifteen hundred,
3:28
so I guess everybody else split the difference.
3:30
Yeah, so it's crowded, it's packed
3:32
full of people. A little after seven
3:35
o'clock, the band comes back from a break
3:37
to play their final big number of the
3:39
dance contest. And you
3:43
know, when you look at interviews
3:46
with people from the time, they all describe
3:48
hearing three loud popping
3:50
noises or snapping noises.
3:53
They sounded like, you know, some people said they sounded like gunshots
3:56
going off.
3:58
In very quick success.
4:01
Floors the walkways of on floors
4:03
four and two collapsed fully
4:05
these cement and we're going to go over you
4:07
know why this happened and what these are all were made of, but
4:10
you know, steel and concrete, and it was super
4:12
heavy and collapsed on hundreds and hundreds
4:15
of people below.
4:16
Yes, so these each one I
4:18
think, weighed something like thirty
4:20
two tons, each of these
4:22
walkways did, and one
4:25
was above the number. The fourth
4:28
story walkway was directly
4:30
above the second story walkway, so much so
4:32
that the second story walkway was dangling from the
4:34
fourth story walkway. So in the fourth story
4:36
walkway gave it came down, the
4:38
second story hit the ground first, the
4:41
fourth story walkway hit the second
4:43
floor. So there was like a stratum
4:46
or a strata of layers
4:49
of destruction of debris and people
4:51
were pin chuck beneath two
4:53
thirty two ton walkways that were
4:55
in four segments. So each segment
4:58
wasn't thirty two tons, but it was enough to really
5:00
do a lot of damage, like immediately,
5:03
like apparently it happened in
5:05
the blink of an eye basically, and
5:07
I mean, like it's really tough to get across,
5:09
like how much of a tragedy this was.
5:11
Like there were couples dancing that were
5:13
killed simultaneously by this
5:16
stuff, So that means that there were
5:18
people in Kansas City who lost both parents
5:20
all at once, or lost one parent,
5:23
or lost a friend. Like a lot of
5:25
people were impacted by this tragedy
5:28
and it just happened in just the blink of an eye.
5:31
Yeah, I mean it ripped from the ceiling
5:33
and they just collapsed. The eyewitness
5:36
accounts if you see any of
5:38
the either contemporaneous footage
5:40
or they've done interviews with people since and
5:43
like follow up documentaries and such, it's
5:45
just awful. Everyone talked about
5:48
how in like the
5:50
some people set up to like five seconds afterward,
5:53
it was just complete silence, like obviously
5:56
the every the band had
5:58
stopped and there was just a brief moment
6:00
of nothingness and then all
6:03
of a sudden screaming, wailing
6:06
people in some
6:08
of the most horrible pain and
6:12
circumstances that you can imagine, which
6:14
again we're going to get to a little bit, But it's
6:18
if you really want to dive into the down
6:20
the rabbit hole of what all happened to these folks, you
6:22
can you can look this stuff up online.
6:24
Yeah, there's there's actually a lot of really well written
6:28
articles on it from out of Kansas
6:30
City.
6:31
But the the in.
6:33
That chaos that ensued
6:35
almost immediately, there were a
6:37
lot of people pinned underneath. There were
6:39
people who've been injured by debris, and
6:42
then there were other people who were
6:45
nearby and were just dazed and
6:48
weren't really injured at all, but just couldn't believe
6:50
what they'd just seen. And then there was a small
6:52
kind of cadre people among
6:55
the witnesses who just kind of
6:57
immediately sprang into action. And we
6:59
you see footage of the immedia affrom at. You see
7:01
men in suits and women in dresses
7:03
like trying to pick through the debris and get
7:06
people out of there as fast as they can. And
7:08
all of this just started even before the
7:10
fire department and police department showed
7:13
up to start to take charge of things.
7:15
People just immediately some people had
7:17
an impulse to go in there and help.
7:20
Yeah, it was and you know, we should mention
7:23
that the fire Department of the Cops.
7:25
Everyone got there really really fast. Yeah, apparently
7:28
they were also close to hospitals.
7:31
I think there were three, it was called Hospital
7:33
Hill, three hospitals that were really
7:35
nearby that started taking people on. They
7:39
were working, you know, basically
7:41
into the night and into the next morning, with
7:44
a final death toll
7:46
of one hundred and fourteen people
7:50
perished and more than two hundred were
7:52
injured. And I think they still listed
7:54
as an American history, at
7:56
least the largest structural disaster in
7:59
history.
8:00
That it was until September
8:03
eleventh, the largest in American history,
8:05
and then it became the largest accidental
8:07
structural disaster in
8:10
American history. So,
8:12
yeah, one hundred and fourteen people
8:15
dead, one hundred and eleven like basically dead
8:17
on the scene. Three more people who were
8:19
gravely injured died later on from their
8:21
injuries. And the
8:24
people who survived there were incredibly
8:27
survivors who were pinned under these
8:29
walkways as slabs of concrete,
8:32
but they were in terrible shape.
8:35
And there was a man named Mark Williams who
8:37
was a survivor, and he's if you read
8:39
about this or watch videos on it, he's very prominent.
8:42
He's a very outspoken type of
8:44
guy, and he talked a lot about
8:46
being rescued. He was the last person rescued
8:48
all the way at four thirty am,
8:51
but he was at the bar that
8:54
was directly beneath the walkways and
8:56
realized what was happening and started
8:59
to run. Those walkways fell so fast
9:02
that apparently he didn't even get his first stride,
9:04
but his legs were astride
9:07
and so he was smushed down into a
9:09
split and that's where he
9:11
stayed until four thirty am. And
9:13
this happened at like seven pm,
9:16
and he survived. He managed to
9:18
live. And there were other stories like that
9:20
too, a little eleven year old boy who was pulled out
9:22
of the rubble. A few people I
9:25
think six or seven or something like that were
9:28
did manage to survive, but the vast
9:30
majority of people who were on or
9:32
under the walkways when they
9:34
collapsed died.
9:36
Yeah, there was.
9:39
There were situations where they had to
9:42
amputate arms and legs on
9:44
the spot just to get people out
9:46
of there and give them a chance
9:49
at living, and they did this kind
9:51
of thing with chainsaws. There
9:53
was one and this is really
9:55
gruesome, but there was one horrific story
9:58
of a guy that was, you know, trying
10:00
to pull someone out and the guy's arm
10:02
just comes off and he's holding it, and
10:05
the officer on charge said, the guy just set
10:08
it down and left. And
10:10
you know, we'll get to the PTSD that
10:13
obviously followed, but a lot of these first
10:16
responders, you
10:18
know, there were some suicides later
10:20
on. There was alcoholism and
10:23
drug use and lives
10:25
and shambles because they didn't have stuff,
10:27
like you know, they went to work the next day. They
10:29
weren't like, all right, we need to get you into counseling
10:32
quick like and start taking care of you. And that's
10:34
one of the big changes that came out of this was
10:37
PTSD therapy for emergency
10:39
responders.
10:40
Yeah, and it had an impact
10:42
on the entire city. I mean, people who weren't
10:44
there, people who didn't even know
10:46
people who were there, were still impacted for
10:48
years and years. It just had it just left
10:50
a blotch on the city. It was just such
10:53
a horrible tragedy. And
10:55
there are a couple of other stories that stuck out to me
10:57
of the people who died. One
11:00
that did was a
11:02
woman named Lynn Vander Hayden who's
11:05
twenty two, and she would
11:07
just happen to be walking through the lobby on her
11:09
way to the Revolving
11:11
restaurant on the top of the hotel.
11:14
She was just passing through and she died. And
11:17
then another one that stood out as a man named Oscar
11:19
Grimm, who pushed his wife
11:21
Joan out of the way and
11:24
she lived and he died. But he
11:26
managed to act that quickly
11:29
that he was able to save his wife's life.
11:32
His last act on earth was to save his wife's
11:35
life, which I think is remarkable.
11:37
Yeah, that's amazing. So
11:40
they turn the you know, it basically
11:42
becomes a war zone. Immediately,
11:45
they turn one room into a triage
11:48
center. They turned one room into a temporary
11:51
morgue. They're trying to get people out of there and
11:53
into the parking lot. It
11:56
is summertime, so was still daylight during
11:59
the initial efforts, but as
12:02
darkness fell, the power had been blown.
12:04
So then it becomes dark overnight
12:07
when they're still you know, sort of digging
12:09
through there, either trying to get dead
12:11
bodies out or trying to get people out
12:14
that are still just wailing in the darkness.
12:16
And not only that, but the
12:18
sprinkler system had torn apart and
12:21
a water pipe burst and for
12:24
about fifty minutes this. You
12:26
know, parts of this room were filling up with
12:29
water, and you know, let's say
12:31
you're trapped in a very small, confined
12:33
space is filling up with water. There were
12:35
survivors that said they thought they were going
12:37
to drown all of a sudden.
12:39
I didn't see that anyone definitively
12:41
did drown, but the people on the bottom
12:43
of the pile were definitely in danger of it
12:45
for sure. It took forty
12:47
five minutes, I think, to finally turn the water
12:49
off forty eight forty eight and
12:52
then but there was a quick thinking
12:54
fire chief. I don't know if it was a deputy chief
12:56
I saw. I didn't get their name, and there were a bunch of
12:58
deputy chiefs there, but they
13:02
were like, we need to bulldoze these front doors
13:04
because they're acting as a damn. So they bulldozed
13:06
the doors and let the water out and kind
13:08
of saved the day. But that
13:10
was I mean, imagine being pinned beneath this rubble
13:12
and now you might accidentally drown.
13:15
Like what a day.
13:17
Yeah, it was. It was a
13:19
tragedy that still looms large.
13:22
And maybe we should take a break and talk
13:25
about what happened and why this happened
13:27
right after this.
13:53
So, Chuck, there were so many people and
13:56
very fortunately, like you said, they were near
13:58
a few hospitals, but they ended up
14:00
requiring seventeen emergency rooms
14:03
for this.
14:04
Yeah.
14:05
They construction companies came
14:07
in and were donating forklifts,
14:09
they were donating cranes, people
14:12
were donating their own personal equipment. Everybody
14:15
basically came and chipped
14:17
in. You mentioned those front doors
14:19
being knocked down. They ended up knocking holes
14:21
through the entire front of the hotel, not
14:25
holes like there was no front of the hotel
14:27
because they had to get a crane in there eventually.
14:30
Because all the equipment that they were trying
14:32
to get forklifts, I mean, you name
14:34
it, to try and lift these concrete
14:37
slabs, it was just pushing everything
14:39
out of the way. So they ended up having to bring in,
14:41
like, you know, the most heavy duty construction
14:44
crane you can imagine to pull these
14:46
things up eventually.
14:47
So I saw, Chuck that like there were
14:49
all these amazing acts of people of generosity,
14:52
of heroism, and just people
14:54
coming together. And I also saw from
14:56
some of the people who were involved that
14:59
within our of the tragedy,
15:02
the mood did like a one to eighty, and
15:04
people started to want to know what happened,
15:07
what had gone wrong, and who was to blame,
15:10
because it was very clearly something had gone
15:12
terribly wrong with the structure of
15:14
those skywalks, and people wanted to know why
15:17
because again, this was just such
15:19
a catastrophic loss of life it was almost
15:21
incomprehensible. But it started
15:23
to settle in that it had happened and
15:25
that somebody somewhere was
15:28
to blame and people wanted to know.
15:31
Yeah.
15:31
So what they eventually figured out, and
15:33
this was after some
15:36
pretty amazing investigation by
15:38
the National Bureau of Standards
15:41
which is now the National Institute of Standards
15:43
and Technology. They
15:45
were I mean they did they X
15:47
rayed material, they did metallurgical examinations
15:50
of steel, they did, you
15:53
know, physics tests, They did
15:55
everything you could imagine to figure
15:57
out what went wrong and what they landed
15:59
on. It turns out they
16:02
didn't really need to do any of those
16:04
tests. It was a design change
16:06
that was, as it turns out, basically
16:08
rubber stamped. The
16:10
original design of these walkways
16:12
that were again two and four were suspended
16:15
above each other, and floor number
16:17
three, which didn't collapse, was just offset from
16:19
that one kind of over the center of the atrium. But
16:22
the original design called for these skywalks
16:25
to be held together with one, you
16:27
know, group of continuous steel
16:29
rods that went through both floors,
16:32
and all the sets of these hollow
16:34
beams threaded with nuts.
16:37
But this was like, you know, forty
16:39
five feet or so of threaded rod.
16:42
And they said, you know what, threading wears
16:44
out, and if you thread a nut forty five feet,
16:47
that's a long way, and eventually by
16:49
the time you get to where you want to go that things are not going to
16:51
be as strong as it needs to be. So
16:53
they changed the design to
16:55
basically hang the second floor
16:58
from the first the fourth floor using
17:00
two sets of rods instead of one continuous
17:03
set, which basically double
17:06
the weight of what everything was hanging
17:08
on on floor four. There's
17:10
a great YouTube video. I
17:13
believe the guy is English. His name
17:15
is Tom Scott, but he got
17:18
an engineer, this guy named Grady from Practical
17:20
Engineers, who put it like this.
17:23
Imagine a long rope that
17:25
two friends are hanging on. One person's hanging
17:27
above the other. That's fine. Then
17:30
imagine that same rope with the
17:32
same two people hanging but in this case,
17:35
the second person is hanging from the other person's
17:37
ankles, so the total weight
17:39
is the same, but the stress
17:42
on that first person or in this case, that
17:45
first top fourth floor is different.
17:47
Yeah.
17:47
I saw a guy named Bill Quip Klapman
17:50
who said flagpole instead of rope.
17:53
So I think that kind of
17:55
demonstrates Chuck that because it's such
17:57
an easy analogy that
18:00
you could have looked at these designs and I
18:02
mean you specifically and me and
18:05
been like, are you sure this is the same as what
18:07
you guys originally had, Like as far
18:09
as the math goes, it was, I
18:11
wouldn't have So it was so radically
18:13
different, But
18:16
at the same time, it seemed like, yeah,
18:18
it's a no brainer. Of course that's what you're gonna
18:20
do, because not only are those could
18:22
those threads wear out? Like
18:25
how you're gonna have to put the entire
18:27
skywalk on each
18:29
of those six threads, those six
18:32
hanging rods threaded hanging rods,
18:35
Like you're gonna have to slide them down, and of course
18:37
you're gonna damage some of those threads and then
18:40
they're totally useless. You won't be able to screw
18:42
those nuts all the way up to the bottom of the skywalk
18:44
any longer. So what you're
18:46
gonna do? You just cut it in half. It
18:49
makes total sense. It's still the same general
18:51
design. The two skywalks are hanging
18:53
from the ceiling, but like you said, now, the
18:56
second floor skywalk is hanging from the
18:58
fourth floor skywalk. That was
19:01
a catastrophic mistake because
19:04
the skywalks themselves were in no way,
19:06
shape or form designed to hold
19:08
up their own weight, and they
19:11
were attached on either end to basically
19:13
portals that led to the hallways
19:16
that continued on the fourth, second and third
19:18
floor on either side. Those connections
19:20
to those portals were in no way, shape
19:22
or form designed to hold the walkway up. So
19:26
I think I said. They spanned the entire length
19:29
of the atrium, which is one hundred and twenty
19:31
feet, So these were one hundred and twenty feet long
19:33
skywalks, and they
19:35
had brass handrails
19:39
at waist high, and then between that and the
19:41
skywalk was class It was super cool looking,
19:43
super late seventies early eighties design.
19:46
Right.
19:47
They were attached to
19:49
the end hallways on either side,
19:52
so they were basically like the hallways were
19:54
just suddenly stripped of everything around them except
19:56
for the part you walked on, and that's
19:59
what crossed to the tre It's pretty cool. And
20:02
they were attached to the hallways that continued
20:04
on either side through portals, and
20:07
the actual
20:09
span itself was held
20:11
aloft by three box beams
20:14
that were perpendicular to the length of
20:17
the walkways themselves. Right,
20:19
So you had basically it looked like a kid
20:22
swing, but three of them,
20:24
and then you had the walkway spanning those
20:26
three things. Does that make sense?
20:29
I think so.
20:29
So the walkway was held up by
20:32
those three box beams
20:35
that were held aloft each by two
20:38
hanging rods, and it
20:40
just it just couldn't do it. What's
20:43
surprising to me is that it lasted a full
20:45
year after it opened.
20:47
You know, yeah, I mean,
20:50
I guess we could go over the load
20:52
bearing here. That seems to be a pretty good place
20:54
for it. The NBS, like
20:56
I said, he was doing the investigating. They
21:00
you know, they did testing. They built their own version
21:03
of this stuff, and they went and
21:05
found that the load bearing capacity for
21:09
just one individual connection
21:11
was eighty one killo
21:13
newtons, which I've never heard of before.
21:16
To clear things up, chuck, a kill a newton is equal
21:18
to one kilogram meter per
21:20
second squared, So I'm.
21:23
Sure that clears it up for everybody. Right, And
21:26
that's just the you know, that's called the dead low. That's
21:28
the way to the structure itself. If
21:32
you have people on it, obviously it's going to be
21:34
a lot different. And there were a lot of people
21:36
on this. They were up there having a good time and dancing
21:38
and partying. They said
21:40
that would add another eleven
21:43
killo newtons, So eventually
21:46
you get to a total you know, by the time it
21:48
collapsed, a total weight of ninety five killer
21:50
newtons, which was fourteen
21:53
more than it was even supposed to hold
21:55
to begin with.
21:56
Right, that's just like, that's how
21:58
it was in reality. The thing
22:00
that makes it even worse to me is that that doesn't
22:03
meet code at all.
22:05
Like code is that you would have to basically
22:07
double that amount of load
22:10
bearing capacity to have passed
22:13
inspection. And yet these things passed
22:15
inspection.
22:16
Oh at the time it was double yes.
22:18
Yeah, yeah, that wasn't a change. Like this thing passed
22:20
inspection despite
22:23
the code requiring it to
22:25
be able to support one hundred and eighty one killer
22:28
newtons. Like you said, they were able
22:30
to support eighty one killer newtons.
22:32
So it was a terrible
22:35
design. And the only explanation
22:38
was that the actual explanation that
22:40
when they changed that design from
22:42
the singular rods, which is two guys hanging
22:45
separately on a fire pole or a rope rather
22:47
than hanging on their ankles, when
22:50
they changed it, no one did
22:52
the calculations to see if it would hold
22:54
up. And that is exactly what happened.
22:57
Yeah, they you know, they did.
22:59
Of course, something like this happens, you're gonna
23:02
inspect, like the welding, you're
23:04
gonna inspect the steel.
23:05
I know.
23:05
They subpoened the actual steel
23:07
manufacturer and the welding
23:10
company and the GC and like basically everybody
23:12
involved. And what
23:15
they found was this thing basically
23:18
like the welds would eventually
23:20
rip. They had these two sort of sea bracket
23:23
beams that they welded together to form one
23:25
hollow, squared beam, and
23:28
the rods ran through the middle of these and those did
23:30
split, and the bolts basically pulled. You
23:33
can see pictures where it just pulled right
23:35
up through the center of them. But they said
23:38
that this would have happened anyway even if it
23:40
was like a solid steel beam and not
23:42
too welded together.
23:43
It wasn't because the welds.
23:44
It wasn't because of
23:46
anything basically other than the fact that this design
23:49
change made it almost inevitable.
23:51
So this design change was done by
23:54
the steel fabricator on what are called
23:56
shop drawings, and shop drawings are basically
23:59
like a close up explanation of
24:01
exactly how you're supposed to manufacture what
24:03
the engineer or the architect wants right,
24:06
And the steel fabricator
24:09
says that they called the
24:11
architect in charge, a guy named Daniel Duncan,
24:15
and got his approval over the phone
24:17
to change the rods from
24:19
one single rod to two rods
24:22
split in half.
24:23
And that was it.
24:26
There was no no one on the steel
24:28
fabricator side did the calculations,
24:30
and yet they stamped their approval on it. Dan
24:33
Duncan didn't do the calculations,
24:36
and yet he stamped his approval on it. And
24:38
then a guy named Jack Gillham, who was the
24:40
art of the engineer of record who
24:42
Dan Duncan worked for and
24:45
was in charge of this project, he didn't do the
24:47
calculations and he stamped a steal of approval
24:49
on that change as well. So it made
24:51
it through. It made it through the process. That
24:53
it's supposed to go through. And when you're
24:55
sitting there building this, or when you're sitting
24:57
there putting all this together and you're looking at
24:59
this and it's got all three stamps
25:02
that it's supposed to have, you're pretty sure
25:04
that it's the way it's supposed
25:06
to be. People don't stop and question
25:08
that kind of thing, or at least they didn't during
25:10
this construction phase.
25:12
Yeah.
25:13
I think that's so important to remember, because I
25:15
think people stop all the time and
25:18
say things aren't safe and that we should revisit
25:20
stuff. Yeah, but they didn't hear
25:23
there was even apparently, you
25:25
know, in interviews after the fact, there were crew
25:28
from the build site that we're saying
25:30
like they saw these beams sort of stressing
25:32
and bending a little bit when they were putting this thing
25:34
together. There was a collapse
25:37
earlier, a
25:39
huge section of the roof collapse on this building
25:41
in the middle of the night while they were
25:43
building it. So this was a project
25:45
that already had sort of one near
25:48
tragedy averted on
25:50
its hands, and it was just sort
25:52
of pushed through and
25:55
no one spoke up. And of course I'm not blaming
25:57
the builder who saw the
25:59
steel, but like, you know,
26:02
everyone should be able to stand up and
26:04
say and not just assume
26:07
that someone else knows what they're doing when
26:09
it comes to a project like this.
26:11
Yeah, I think that's essential, and I think that
26:14
this disaster actually kind
26:16
of helped change that too. That was one of the things that
26:18
did change. So I'd say, Chuck, we take
26:20
a break and come back and talk about some of the fallout
26:22
from this.
26:23
All right, let's do it.
26:50
So before we broke, you mentioned a guy named
26:52
Jack Gillham, who was the engineer
26:54
in charge of the project.
26:56
Gillham would go on to be a public speaker.
27:00
He later went on to say, you know that the problem
27:02
this is a quote was so obvious that a first
27:05
year engineering student could have
27:07
figured it out
27:09
too.
27:10
Little, too late.
27:10
Obviously, there was a tribunal
27:13
form by the Missouri Board of Professional Engineers
27:16
in nineteen eighty four in the years following that
27:18
ruled it they were grossly
27:20
negligent. The
27:23
phone approval was obviously grossly
27:25
negligent, and there was quote
27:27
a conscious indifference to professional
27:30
duty.
27:31
So how does that
27:33
happen?
27:35
It was a time where there
27:37
was a lot of production and
27:39
construction being rushed through, not
27:42
just there but all over the place the
27:44
late seventies in the early eighties, it
27:46
just seems like there were a lot of fast track projects.
27:49
There wasn't as much oversight, there
27:51
weren't as many rules in
27:53
place, and there was a
27:56
lot of stuff ed. Who helped us out with this
27:58
pointed out the Kemper Arena roof collapse
28:01
in seventy nine. The
28:03
Hartford Civic Center had another collapse
28:05
in the year before in seventy eight. The
28:08
chat Plain Towers in
28:10
Miami that collapsed in twenty twenty one, they
28:12
were built in that time, in the late seventies and
28:14
early eighties, So it just seems like
28:16
it was a time where you know, people
28:19
were probably just rushing around trying to
28:21
make money. Greed is always a factor, I
28:23
think in stuff like this and just trying
28:25
to build bill build.
28:27
So yeah, but.
28:29
Yeah, and there were it was a cascading
28:31
chain of failures
28:33
to not
28:36
pass the buck, to actually stop and look at things.
28:38
But you can really lay at the most at Duncan
28:40
and Gilliam's feet, and that tribunal
28:43
that Gillam went through found,
28:45
like you said, that he was grossly negligent, But
28:47
the way that they proved his negligence
28:50
was that his firm had a
28:52
policy that the engineer of record on any
28:54
project had to verify all plans
28:57
and all changes them
29:00
before stamping.
29:02
It with approval.
29:03
And the fact that he had failed to meet his own
29:05
requirements, that tribunal said,
29:07
that's proof positive that
29:09
you were negligent in this. And then
29:11
they also said, apparently he
29:14
had a lot of pushback that he was giving.
29:16
He would not accept responsibility. He
29:18
deflected it at every turn,
29:21
and it was so his attitude about it was
29:23
so cavalier.
29:24
They said that.
29:26
They cited it as an additional
29:30
breach of professional obligations.
29:32
It was that bad that, like his refusal
29:35
accept responsibility, was yet another
29:39
piece of negligence that happened after
29:41
the fact.
29:42
Yeah, and you know, if all this
29:44
stuff sounds criminal, none
29:47
of it rose to any kind
29:49
of criminal proceeding.
29:51
It was a civil legal
29:54
quagmire.
29:56
Like we said, it was owned by Hallmark Cards,
29:58
this building and the ones around and
30:01
there were one hundred and thirty plus
30:03
lawsuits. They didn't all get
30:05
together and kind of go after them together,
30:08
which you know sometimes can happen.
30:10
They were fragmented.
30:11
Some people went at it alone, some people got
30:13
together with you know a few other people. And
30:16
there were one hundred and thirty suits plus
30:18
total, seeking more than three billion
30:20
dollars in damages. The
30:23
hotel costs fifty million dollars to build to
30:26
begin with, like the entire operation, And
30:29
depending on the cases,
30:32
they always settled, sometimes kind
30:34
of right up until they were supposed to go to trial. But
30:37
they did settle all of them in
30:39
various ways. There was a woman
30:42
named Winfred Witscher who got
30:44
five hundred dollars because her face
30:46
got cut. There was a
30:48
widow and four kids of
30:52
Henry Botnan who got six hundred
30:54
thousand dollars. Different
30:56
federal courts would come in or different judges
30:58
would come in and basically
31:00
say all right, let's let's get together
31:03
on a large settlement when it ended up being one
31:05
thousand dollars to basically anybody who could
31:07
prove they were there period, like whether
31:09
or not they were injured. If you could prove you were
31:12
there, you would get a thousand bucks.
31:14
Yeah, and I guess waive any right
31:16
to sue after that point. Well,
31:18
sure, But they ended up paying out something like one hundred
31:20
and forty million dollars. Most of it came
31:23
from Hallmark.
31:24
Yeah, I saw one fifty well, and that's.
31:26
In early eighties dollars, I believe, right.
31:29
Yeah, I mean not close to the three bill.
31:32
No, no, no, for sure.
31:33
But they Hallmark ended
31:35
up paying out, mostly because they
31:37
were the ultimate owner of
31:39
that hotel, and from what I saw,
31:42
they were. There was a guy
31:44
who was suing Hallmark,
31:46
but Hallmark settled, and the lawyer
31:49
had done all this extensive research
31:51
and discovery and it basically found that Hallmark
31:53
was really more culpable than anyone
31:56
thought, and Hallmark's Hallmark
31:58
settled. The thing never got published, but
32:02
I got the impression that's why Hallmark ended
32:04
up spending the most money out
32:06
of anybody to settle
32:08
these claims.
32:10
And the.
32:12
Whole experience just tore
32:14
the town apart because there
32:16
were people who wanted to get to the truth and wanted, you
32:18
know, retribution, and apparently
32:20
the business community really wanted
32:22
to kind of sweep it under the rug for
32:24
a lot of different reasons. But I think a lot
32:26
of the boosters were like, this is a black eye on the
32:28
city. I saw it described as and
32:31
the Kansas City Star and the Kansas City Times
32:34
said no, no, no, we're going to report on this. Even
32:36
in the face of community pushback,
32:40
I guess, and they won pulisers
32:42
for their reporting for local reporting
32:45
because they got to the
32:47
bottom of what actually happened.
32:50
Yeah, there was a guy, like
32:52
you said, there was a news crew on the scene anyway
32:54
for the tea dance, and
32:57
this cameraman was filming a lot of the aftermath,
32:59
and he had people there
33:01
that were victims that were coming up trying
33:03
to like rip his camera away and start
33:05
a fight with the guy, saying he shouldn't
33:07
be shooting that stuff. But
33:10
people came to his defense in the moment.
33:12
What I don't get is how
33:15
I mean, I know Hallmark ultimately will pay because they
33:17
were the parent company, But how did someone
33:19
say they were more culpable than
33:24
when it's really obvious that it was a design
33:26
change that was rubber stamped by
33:28
this design firm, Like,
33:30
what did Hallmark? It's not like they ran that up the greeting
33:34
card chain and they said, yeah, let's do that.
33:36
This is the impression I have that
33:39
the whole thing was fast and loose and cutting
33:41
corners was in part because
33:43
Hallmark or the subsidiary
33:46
Hallmark owned the hotel, was
33:48
cheaping out and one of the
33:51
one piece of evidence I saw that kind of
33:53
puts that together was from
33:55
Gillham, who one of his defenses
33:57
was I asked for on site in spaces,
34:00
at the metal fabricators, at the
34:02
job site, everywhere, and Hallmark
34:04
wouldn't shell out the extra money to make
34:07
that happen. Had there been an inspector
34:09
on site, then this would have never happened
34:11
kind of thing. So I
34:15
think one of the reasons why the business community wanted
34:17
to sweep it on the rug is Hallmark is the It
34:19
was, at least at the time, the far and away the largest
34:22
employer in Kansas City, very
34:24
much beloved. A lot of people owed their livelihood
34:27
to Hallmark, Their kids went
34:29
to college because of Hallmark. It was a really
34:32
well regarded company. And
34:35
apparently that
34:37
that was that facade or whatever,
34:39
that image was attacked by the
34:41
Times in the Star. And that was one reason why some people
34:44
were so against that reporting, because even
34:46
if you didn't have anything to hide, but you still had an
34:48
affinity for Hallmark because they were your employer,
34:51
you might be upset at the news for reporting
34:53
that kind of thing.
34:54
Even sure, a
34:56
lot of the many millions of dollars were
34:58
ear Mark for charities that
35:01
Hallmark donated to as part of.
35:03
These plea deals.
35:04
Hyatt actually sued for
35:06
four million dollars, but not Hallmark.
35:09
They sued the design
35:12
firm. They sued twelve different parties, including
35:14
the design firm, the GC, the
35:17
steel manufacturer that I could
35:19
not find out what happened with those lawsuits,
35:21
which was really frustrating.
35:23
But there were lawsuits all over the place.
35:25
Yeah, it was a mess. And as you would expect,
35:27
and like I said to this, the shadow hung over
35:30
the entire city for a decade. Apparently it
35:32
came in a really terrible time because
35:34
the city had just gone through a burst of prosperity,
35:36
I think, and this hotel
35:38
was kind of a symbol of that, and
35:41
so it kind of really shook
35:43
the foundations of this kind of exuberant
35:45
Kansas City. Like you know how like when you're the
35:49
more excited you are, the more happy you are,
35:51
the harder you fall when something comes
35:54
along and just completely undermines that. I
35:57
get the impression that that was kind of what up
36:00
into Kansas City. It took a long time for
36:02
it to recover. It wasn't until two thousand
36:04
and eight that they even managed to erect
36:06
a memorial because Apparently there's so
36:08
many people who didn't want to think about it or talk
36:10
about it or memorialize it. But
36:12
somebody, some of the survivor's family
36:16
or some of the victims' families got
36:19
together and created a
36:21
memorial at a park just a
36:23
block or so away, and Hallmark kicked
36:25
in twenty five thousand dollars.
36:27
That's right to build the
36:29
memorial itself.
36:32
It is still there, the higher regency is and
36:34
those that atream is still
36:36
there, and the walkway on the second floor is still
36:38
there. Of course, it's not held up by it's
36:41
not suspended. It is held from underneath
36:43
by columns and obvious And
36:45
you know, I mentioned the PTSD for
36:48
first responders. That was a big push after
36:50
this, and then also just
36:53
you know, a general tightening
36:55
up of and this wasn't
36:57
just in Kansas City, this was an international incident.
36:59
So it really shook
37:02
up the industry as far as how fast
37:05
and loose things were going overall.
37:07
Yeah, I know the asse. The American
37:09
Society of Civil Engineers
37:12
came out and said, unambiguously,
37:15
if you're the engineer of record, you have
37:17
to verify every single change or
37:19
you are completely responsible for anything
37:22
that happens as a result of that.
37:24
It's on you, like, just want to make sure
37:26
we're clear about that. And that was that was a change
37:28
that came directly from that and from Gillham
37:31
himself.
37:31
Well, the buck has to stop with somebody.
37:34
It was a situation where everybody
37:36
was finger pointing and when
37:39
when you can point to a single decision
37:42
that that caused this and not like
37:45
well it was sort of this and this and this right
37:47
like that these things had had they not even
37:50
had that tea dance, eventually
37:52
they would have collapsed.
37:53
They just weren't built correctly.
37:55
Yeah, it's uh, it's nuts.
37:57
I saw that even the original design wouldn't
38:00
have met code for holding
38:02
up people, wouldn't have reached
38:04
those killing newtons that it needed.
38:07
You got anything else, No, I got nothing
38:09
else. Big
38:12
shout out to the people of Kansas City. I
38:14
hope to do a show there one day. We did go to Lawrence,
38:16
Kansas and Saint Louis in
38:19
the general area, but we have not hit
38:21
Kansas City yet.
38:22
So we'll do that one day.
38:23
Yes, one day we will for sure. And
38:26
since Chuck just promised Kansas City
38:28
we're going to come to a show. Of course, he unlocked
38:30
listener mail.
38:34
I'm gonna call this just
38:37
something a little lighter.
38:38
I think we could use it, yeah,
38:40
because we inadvertently well,
38:43
I'll just read it. Hey, guys, been listening to the show
38:45
for about six years. My first time writing
38:47
in to highlight an ongoing mistake that
38:50
is nonetheless hilarious and I assume
38:52
completely unintentional. During the
38:54
twenty two Halloween episode, Josh
38:56
voice one of the great characters in English literature,
38:59
Megal in the toll House.
39:01
But in subsequent episodes, when you guys, namely
39:04
Chuck, tries to get Josh to do the voice, he
39:06
refers to him as Smiegel. Spiegel,
39:09
of course, is the hobbit from the Lord of the Rings who's
39:11
corrupted by the One Ring and eventually transformed into
39:14
Gollum. After hearing this, I went back
39:16
and red listened to the twenty
39:18
twenty two Halloween episode again, and I can sure
39:20
I can assure you that the toll House is even better
39:22
second time around. First, and
39:24
now I can just imagine a mixture of Josh
39:27
and Andy serkis narrating the dialogue of
39:29
Smiegele Gollum as the Meagle character
39:31
in question. I almost
39:33
didn't want to write in because of this to make you
39:35
aware of.
39:35
This hilarious error.
39:37
Though I assume someone will eventually beat me to
39:40
it, but not true. Josh
39:42
Bills Borrow, you were the first to write in. We did get
39:44
a couple of people that wrote in after you though that
39:48
Yeah, he were first, Ease and Josh
39:50
is from Madison, Connecticut.
39:52
Way to go, Josh, thanks for that.
39:54
Thanks to everybody who wrote in to say the same thing,
39:56
because it is pretty hilarious.
39:59
Maybe that's why I'm if I Migle's been
40:01
off.
40:01
I've been accidentally doing sgle proughly.
40:03
So well, we'll get to the bottom of that, everybody.
40:06
I promise Megel will be back someday.
40:08
Someday.
40:09
Uh And if you want to get in touch of this, like Josh
40:11
at all did, you can send us an email
40:14
to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
40:17
dot com.
40:20
You Know, Stuff you Should Know is a production
40:22
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
40:24
my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
40:27
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40:29
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