Member: blackjack000

I see what you're saying about underlying human factors to each of the incidents and how they differed. I may be a little confused. I often am. ;-) but I was thinking that both were caused by harmonic vibrations (or some such thing). The bridge because of its design and the wind; the sky walk because of it's shoddy and poorly inspected design reacting to the rhythmic vibrations from the dancing on the sky walk.

I'm not at all sure that's the same thing though. I agree with you that the design and construction of the bridge was well done and was safe to the best knowledge of that time.

The Hyatt-Regency Sky Walk collapse was just totally irresponsible work that created a disaster-waiting-to-happen.

P.S. I still haven't tracked down my books on these.

posted by furdog at 3:38 pm (EST) on Jan 11, 2009

Hi, blackjack000--

Sorry to be so long in responding. (I did start this group after all.) I know I've got a couple of good things on the Tacoma-Narrows collapse, one that's more of the "Oh wow, look at that!" type, and another that goes into much more detail about the physics/engineering aspects. Can I find them right now? No. So I'll have to get back to you on it. Have you done any reading on the Hyatt Regency skywalk collapse? I know that some of the underlying causes were similar. (Although others were completely opposite.) Anyway, I'll get back to you!

posted by furdog at 9:57 am (EST) on Dec 22, 2008