Forty Years Later: The Kansas City Skywalk Tragedy
July 21, 2021, via Zoom Presented in partnership with the Kansas City Public Library. On July 17, 1981, two skywalks collapsed at the Hyatt Regency Kansas City Hotel during a tea dance that was being held in the lobby below. The tragedy ultimately killed 114 people, injured at least 216, and left the survivors and first responders with enduring trauma. This disaster was the deadliest structural collapse in U.S. history until the tragic events of the World Trade Centers in 2001. How could something like this happen? And as we witness the devastation at the Surfside condos collapse in Florida, what can be done to prevent structural failures like these in the future? Join us for this month’s Science Matters Lunch and Learn with Robynn Andracsek, P.E., who will discuss the Kansas City skywalk collapse, what went wrong, and what engineers can learn from this tragedy forty years later. The speaker: Robynn Andracsek, P.E., is an associate environmental engineer from Burns & McDonnell in Kansas City, MO. She has 20 years of experience with specializations in air permitting and the utility industry. Robynn has a BS in mechanical engineering and a MS in environmental engineering, both from the University of Kansas, where she currently serves on the Advisory Board for the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering. As a freelance writer and speaker, Robynn is a contributing editor to Power Engineering magazine and Engineering360 magazine. She has also volunteered for the Skywalk Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit that works to honor those who were lost in the skywalk collapse.
