By Chris Ochsner
The Kansas City Star
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The scenes of devastation were horrendous when the skywalks of Kansas City’s Hyatt Regency Hotel came crashing down on the crowd below on July 17, 1981.
Oversights in the construction of the two skywalks that were suspended in the hotel atrium caused them to detach from their moorings and crash onto the crowd gathered there for the Friday night tea dance.
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These scenes captured by photographers from The Kansas City Star and its sister paper The Kansas City Times show the desperate and heroic efforts by rescue crews and ordinary citizens to save the unfortunate victims of the disaster.
Many of the photographs show the rescue efforts among the piles of debris but one photo stands out for its touching moment of humanity.
When Sol and Rosette Koenigsberg were carried out of the wreckage to be triaged for their injuries in the street in front of the hotel, they were placed next to each other on stretchers.
Sol’s back and one of his legs were broken in the collapse. Rosette sustained minor injuries. While they lay in the stretchers waiting for treatment. The couple reached out for each other and held hands. A photographer for the newspapers’ saw the Koenigsbergs and captured the comforting touch amidst the chaos of the rescue operations.
The efforts of the rescue crews were not in vain. 216 of the injured survived the collapse, but in the end, 114 people lost their lives. The Hyatt skywalk collapse remains one of the worst engineering disasters in U.S. history.
Having trouble seeing the video? Watch it here.
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