The Tiny Design Change That Killed 114 People

On July 17, 1981, two suspended walkways collapsed inside the Hyatt Regency hotel in Kansas City, killing 114 people and injuring 216. The steel wasn't weak. A small change during construction doubled the load on a single connection, and nobody checked the math. But the official investigation found something even worse. In this episode of Yield Point, we take the connection apart, piece by piece, using the federal investigation. 00:00 Cold open 00:51 The night of the tea dance 02:07 How the walkways were supposed to work 03:16 The change 04:33 7:05 PM 05:23 The autopsy 06:50 The lesson + next episode SOURCES National Bureau of Standards, "Investigation of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Walkways Collapse," Building Science Series 143 (1982) Archival photographs: Dr. Lee Lowery Jr., P.E. (released into the public domain via Wikimedia Commons) Music: original score made for this video Some scenes are AI-generated reconstructions, shown separately from archival photographs. No real people are depicted in the AI scenes. #engineering #structuralengineering #documentary