Video above: Doctor reflects on Hyatt Skywalk collapse 40 years later

On a balmy Missouri evening in 1981, this was one of the hottest places to be.

More than 1,500 revelers had gathered on the first floor of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency for a popular tea dance party hosted by the swanky 1-year-old hotel.

As musicians performed big band hits, couples swing-danced under long, novel skywalks spanning the second and fourth floors that seemed to float in the sky, historians have recalled.

Then, as the orchestra was said to be playing Duke Ellington's "Satin Doll," the fourth-floor skywalk collapsed onto the second-floor skywalk directly beneath it. Both walkways then crashed onto the ground floor, killing 114 people and injuring more than 200 others.

The catastrophe on July 17, 1981, is one of the deadliest structural collapses in U.S. history. That same year, the Champlain Towers South condo building in Surfside, Florida, was completed — only to meet a similar, disastrous fate this June, when it partially collapsed killing at least 97 people.

Forty years after the Kansas City disaster, the memories are still vivid. And the lessons learned from it are as relevant as ever — not just for engineers and architects but for everyone, several people close to the tragedy told CNN.

Here's what they want Americans to remember:

Don't rush to judgment, and don't ignore the details

Bill Quatman was a 23-year-old architect just starting his career in Kansas City. He wasn't involved in the design of the skywalks, but he marveled at the way they seemed to float in the air — an unusual sight at the time, he said.

He and his wife had dined at the hotel a week before the collapse and had noticed another spectacle:

"A few thousand people were enjoying themselves at a tea dance, listening to big band music from an orchestra, dancing and laughing to tunes of Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington," Quatman said.

"We saw this tea dance going on (and thought), 'That looks like fun; we should come back sometime.'"

But on the evening of July 17, they had other plans. That night — after the skywalks fell — a friend told Quatman about the tragedy but mistakenly said the hotel's roof had fallen in.

"The first 48 hours, nobody really knew the cause, but there was speculation — just like there is today with the Surfside condos," Quatman said. "All sorts of theories floating around, and nobody knows ... I think one of the similarities is the rush to judgment."

Video below: Hyatt survivor says collapse forever changed him, changed Kansas City

The cause of the Surfside collapse is still under investigation.

One popular myth following the Kansas City disaster was that the song playing at the time of the collapse — Ellington's "Satin Doll" — somehow contributed to the skywalks falling, he said.

The theory was "harmonic vibrations from the band music caused the steel to oscillate," Quatman said. But experts and courts later determined there were fatal engineering design errors.

The original design had called for the second-floor and fourth-floor skywalks to both be supported with a set of steel hanger rods connected to the ceiling. But a design change was made over the phone between the steel fabricator and the structural engineer, Quatman said.

"They hung the second-floor bridge from the fourth-floor bridge and doubled the load on that connection, which was ultimately a fatal design change," he said.

The resulting design was "capable of withstanding only an estimated 30 percent of the mandated minimum," according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. A series of miscommunications and failures to double-check calculations and plans led to the collapse.

In the decades since, Quatman has spent much of his career as both an architect and lawyer speaking to engineering and architecture students to help prevent such catastrophic mistakes in the future.

"I always end my talks by saying you cannot ignore the small details," Quatman said. "The (connection) that failed was about 8 inches wide."

Don't take the 'simple things' for granted

Brent Wright was just 17 years old when he lost his mother and stepfather. Since then, every anniversary of the collapse has been challenging.

"Even though it's been 40 years, those memories come flooding back," said Wright, now 57. "It's emotional. All these years later, I still miss my mother and stepfather."

Karen and Gene Jeter had gotten married just 16 days before the skywalks collapsed. The newlyweds spent their final moments doing what Karen loved — dancing.

It was a skill she insisted her son learn — for the sake of his future dating life.

"When I was growing up, my mom said, 'Look, you need to learn how to dance. All the girls will love it if you actually know how to dance.' So she taught me how to dance," Wright said.

Footage of the Hyatt Regency's dance party showed his mother and stepfather having a glorious time, Wright said. The event was so popular, his father and future stepmother were also there.

But Wright didn't know that — or about the tragedy that would change his life — until the following day. On the night of the collapse, he was working the loading dock at a Macy's store to earn money for college.

"I had the radio turned on on the dock and heard something come over the radio about some accident. It wasn't clear what the details were," Wright recalled.

"I called my mom because I was going to ask her about it. Nobody answered."

Wright, who lived with his father at the time, came home that night and went right back to work early the next morning. Then his dad called him and told him to come home immediately.

"My dad just looked at us and said, 'I don't know any way to tell you this, but your mom and Gene were killed at the Hyatt collapse,'" Wright said. "It was absolutely awful."

The Jeters never got to see Wright and his younger sister Shelly become adults and have children of their own.

"They've missed so many things through the years," Wright said. "They missed me going to college, graduating from college, graduating from law school, getting married, having children. All those things, all those milestones in our lives. It's difficult, even 40 years later."

Over the years, he's learned to cope with grief — a process he knows families of the Surfside victims are just beginning.

"You try not to forget the past but also try not to let all the grief or the difficulties from the past hold you back from going forward," he said. "I know my mom wanted that. She would have said, 'Go ahead and live your life and be happy. But don't forget me.' So we don't."

To ensure his mother, stepfather and 112 other victims are never forgotten, Wright became president of the Skywalk Memorial Foundation. It led efforts to create the Skywalk Memorial, which features a modern design evoking two people dancing, along with the names of those lost. It also honors the hundreds injured and the rescuers.

"Even all these years later, none of (the rescuers) have ever been able to forget what they saw, what they did, which was selfless," Wright said.

This anniversary, Wright is also remembering the dozens of lives lost in the collapse at the Surfside condo building.

"All those people in Florida, my heart breaks for them. I want them to know that there are people everywhere who are thinking about them, praying for them," he said.

"I hope that they get help from mental health professionals because it's not something you can do on your own."

And there's a lesson everyone can take away from such tragedies.

"We all have to remember not to take those day-to-day, simple things (like) family for granted. You just don't know when you may never have another chance to see them again," he said.

"It's a good reminder, and it's something I've tried to do as I live my life is to try not to take those things for granted."

The mental health needs of first responders are crucial

Vince Ortega, then 26, was the first Kansas City police officer dispatched to the scene.

On the police radio, "The way it came out was (an) elderly lady had fallen off the escalator," said Ortega, now 66.

More calls quickly followed, but nothing prepared him for what he saw when he arrived at the hotel.

"People were running out, bleeding from the head," he said.

"When I went in, I saw a dead body right away. The rubble had flattened the body out. I could tell it was a woman because she had a dress on."

Ortega had no idea what had collapsed. So fearing another imminent collapse, he tried to rush as many injured survivors as he could outside to safety.

"You're just helpless because you're bringing out just a few at a time, and there's a whole lobby full of people," he said.

"Then water started coming out of the walls."

The collapse of the skywalks broke the sprinkler system, flooding the floor with several inches of water, Ortega said.

No amount of academy training can fully prepare a first responder for such a mass tragedy, he said.

"There was this one gentleman who was underneath the rubble ... 'I need help! I need help!' And he had his arm sticking out from the rubble," Ortega said.

"So my (officer) friend grabbed his hand and started to pull him out, and his arm just came off. And my friend just dropped it and walked out the door. He actually never came back -- he never returned to the police department."

Such overwhelming trauma highlights the need for first responders to have adequate mental health support, Ortega said.

"Back then they didn't really offer the mental health assistance" needed, he said.

That changed after other officers who had responded to the collapse started leaving the force.

"They did it after people started not showing up for work. And they figured out nobody wanted to admit they got affected by it."

Ortega said he's lucky to come from a family of first responders — including two firefighter brothers and a nurse mother — who helped him cope with the trauma.

But some emergency workers can be haunted by feelings of inadequacy despite their most valiant efforts.

"You always wish you could have done a little more," Ortega said.

He now thinks about the first responders in Surfside, who have been digging through tons of rubble for weeks trying to find those still missing from the condo collapse. Digging through the wreckage, one Florida rescuer said, has also meant "emotionally digging for more strength to continue."

Ortega hopes the Surfside teams can benefit from the lessons learned 40 years ago in Kansas City.

"Once it's done, please seek counseling," Ortega said. "Over the years, I've seen people leave the job with mental health issues because of the overwhelming tragedy that they see over time."

"Everybody is vulnerable," he said. "I was just fortunate."

SURFSIDE, Fla. —

Exhausted crews neared the end of their search for victims of a Miami-area condominium tower collapse Wednesday as the death toll reached 97 with just a handful of people still unaccounted for.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at a news conference that the number of people considered missing has dwindled as authorities work to identify everyone connected to the building.

"It’s a scientific, methodical process to identify human remains. As we’ve said, this work is becoming more difficult with the passage of time,” Levine Cava said Tuesday, adding that it is "truly a fluid situation."

Twenty days after the disaster, Levine Cava said crews had removed 18 million pounds of rubble from the site. Search crews were taking great care to identify and preserve any personal property recovered, the mayor added.

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"They have given of their heart and soul," Levine Cava said of the crews that have worked around the clock for nearly three weeks. "We are totally walking among superheroes."

It will take much longer for experts to figure out what caused the 12-story Champlain Towers South condominium to fall into a tangled heap of concrete and steel on June 24. The building was set for its four-decade recertification review when it collapsed.

Engineers and others investigating the cause of the collapse have been identifying key pieces of the 40-year-old building to determine what happened, Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said.

“We're looking at how the building lines up with what the plans say,” he said.

The search for answers includes an engineer hired by the town of Surfside, a team from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, experts hired by lawyers representing families and others.

Part of the investigation will include what decisions were made by government building officials and the condominium board, which knew of serious structural problems with the tower as early as fall 2018. Some residents were reluctant to pay assessments in the tens of thousands of dollars for the repairs, leading to acrimonious board meetings.

There is also concern about the stability of Champlain Towers North, a nearly identical building next door built at the same time and by the same developer as its doomed sister structure. So far, no mandatory evacuation order has been given for that building.

"If there were a need to make any changes, they would," Levine Cava said of the north tower.

Discussions continue about what to do with the collapse site with families of the victims, Burkett said. Some residents who escaped the disaster want the tower rebuilt so they can move back in. Others want some kind of memorial site.

"We want the families to tell us what they want to see,” Burkett said. "I'm looking forward to having those discussions."

Florida officials are working on plans to tear down what’s left of a partially collapsed oceanfront condominium building after concerns about the structure’s instability prompted a 15-hour halt to the search for survivors.

After rescue efforts resumed Thursday evening, officials said they had started planning for the likely demolition of the remaining structure even as searchers continue to comb the rubble pile beneath it.

Scott Nacheman, a FEMA structures specialist, said engineers are looking at different methods for the demolition and how to proceed "to make the site safe for ongoing rescue operations."

Nacheman said that if the building comes down, there initially will be a slowdown in the rescue operation. But he said the demolition of the structure would create a safer working environment that could allow more personnel on the site and accelerate the pace of the work.

He said it would likely be weeks before officials schedule the demolition.

On Friday morning, about a dozen workers could be seen digging through the pile that now reached about 20 feet, more than 10 feet less than it was a week ago. Cranes were again lifting heavy objects from the pile and then workers would climb into the pile and begin removing smaller rubble by hand.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the decision about the demolition needs to be made "extremely carefully and methodically," considering the potential impact on the pile of debris and the effect on the search.

The rescue work was halted early Thursday after crews noticed widening cracks and up to a foot of movement in a large column.

Work resumed shortly before 5 p.m. after the site was evaluated by structural engineers, Cava said, describing firefighters as "really, really excited out there."

"We will continue to search feverishly, as we have done all along in the parts of the collapse that we currently have access to," she said.

The work stoppage had threatened to dim hopes for finding anyone alive in the debris a week after the tower came down. Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said the halt was worrisome since "minutes and hours matter, lives are at stake."

The temporary halt to rescue operations unfolded on the same day that President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden visited the devastated community.

The collapse of the 12-story Champlain Towers South condominium killed at least 18 people and left 145 missing. No one has been rescued since the first hours after the collapse.

"This is life and death," Biden said during a briefing. "We can do it, just the simple act of everyone doing what needs to be done, makes a difference."

"There’s gonna be a lot of pain and anxiety and suffering and even the need for psychological help in the days and months that follow," he said. "And so, we’re not going anywhere."

Peter Milián is a cousin of Marcus Guara, who died along with his wife, Anaely Rodriguez, and their two children, 10-year-old Lucia Guara and 4-year-old Emma Guara. Milián said he understood why the rescue work had to be temporarily halted.

"I mean, they’ve done everything they can. But we trust the people that are on the ground. And obviously, they’ve got to do what’s best for their people, right? Because it is a dangerous situation," he said.

During a private meeting with family members, Biden drew on his own experiences with grief to try to comfort them. Biden lost his first wife and baby daughter in a car crash and decades later lost an adult son to brain cancer.

"I just wish there was something I could do to ease the pain," he said in a video posted on Instagram by Jacqueline Patoka, a woman who was close to a couple and their daughter who are still missing.

Biden spoke of wanting to switch places with a lost or missing loved one. "The waiting, the waiting is unbearable," he said.

The cause of the collapse is under investigation. A 2018 engineering report found that the building's ground-floor pool deck was resting on a concrete slab that had "major structural damage" and needed extensive repairs. The report also found "abundant cracking" of concrete columns, beams and walls in the parking garage.

Just two months before the building came down, the president of its board wrote a letter to residents saying that structural problems identified in the 2018 inspection had "gotten significantly worse" and that major repairs would cost at least $15.5 million. With bids for the work still pending, the building suddenly collapsed last Thursday.

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Associated Press writers Freida Frisaro in Fort Lauderdale and Mark Kennedy in New York contributed to this report.

SURFSIDE, Fla. —

Rescuers searching for a fifth day for survivors of a Florida condo building collapse used bucket brigades and heavy machinery Monday as they worked atop a precarious mound of pulverized concrete, twisted steel and the remnants of dozens of households.

Authorities said their efforts were still a search-and-rescue operation, but no one has been found alive since hours after the collapse on Thursday. Eleven people have been confirmed killed, and more than 150 others are still missing in the community of Surfside, just outside Miami.

The pancake collapse of the building left layer upon layer of intertwined debris, frustrating efforts to reach anyone who may have survived in a pocket of space.

"Every time there's an action, there's a reaction," Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah said during a news conference. "It's not an issue of we could just attach a couple of cords to a concrete boulder and lift it and call it a day." Some of the concrete pieces are smaller, the size of basketballs or baseballs.

Underscoring the risks of the work, he noted that families who rode buses to visit the site on Sunday witnessed a rescuer tumble 25 feet down the pile. Workers and victims must both be considered, he said.

"It's going to take time," he said. "It's not going to happen overnight. It's a 12-story building."

Relatives continued their visits on Monday. From outside a neighboring building, more than two dozen family members watched teams of searchers excavate the building site. Some held onto each other for support. Others hugged and prayed. Some people took photos.

The intense effort includes firefighters, sniffer dogs and search experts using radar and sonar devices.

Early Monday, a crane lifted a large slab of concrete from the debris pile, enabling about 30 rescuers in hard hats to move in and carry smaller pieces of debris into red buckets, which are emptied into a larger bin for a crane to remove. The work has been complicated by intermittent rain showers, but the fires that hampered the initial search have been extinguished.

Jimmy Patronis, Florida's chief financial officer and state fire marshal, said it was the largest deployment of such resources in Florida history that was not due to a hurricane. He said the same number of people were on the ground in Surfside as during Hurricane Michael, a devastating Category 5 hurricane that hit 12 counties in 2018.

"They're working around the clock," Patronis said. "They're working 12 hours at a time, midnight to noon to midnight."

Andy Alvarez, a deputy incident commander with Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, told ABC's "Good Morning America" that rescuers have been able to find some voids, or spaces, inside the wreckage, mostly in the basement and the parking garage.

"We have been able to tunnel through the building," Alvarez said. "This is a frantic search to seek that hope, that miracle, to see who we can bring out of this building alive."

Others who have seen the wreckage up close were daunted by the task ahead. Alfredo Lopez, who lived with his wife in a sixth-floor corner apartment and narrowly escaped, said he finds it hard to believe anyone is alive in the rubble.

"If you saw what I saw: nothingness. And then, you go over there and you see, like, all the rubble. How can somebody survive that?" Lopez told The Associated Press.

Authorities on Monday insisted they are not losing hope.

"We're going to continue and work ceaselessly to exhaust every possible option in our search," Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Monday.

Deciding to transition from search-and-rescue work to a recovery operation is agonizing, said Dr. Joseph A. Barbera, a professor at George Washington University. That decision is fraught with considerations, he said, that only those on the ground can make.

Barbera coauthored a study examining disasters where some people survived under rubble for prolonged periods of time. He has also advised teams on where to look for potential survivors and when to conclude "that the probability of continued survival is very, very small."

"It's an incredibly difficult decision, and I've never had to make that decision," Barbera said.

As time goes on, he said, teams will begin a process called "rapid delayering, where you take more risk by moving larger amounts of rubble, because you recognize you're running up against the time factor for survival."

How long a person can survive depends on a host of issues, including the availability of water, the severity of any injuries and the degree to which they are trapped, Barbera said.

"The human dimension is huge -- the uncertainty that you could be leaving someone alive behind by ending too early," Barbera said. "Families continue to have hope, as do rescuers, which is why you continue to see them pushing so hard within these difficult conditions."

The ultimate decision to move into the recovery phase, he said, will have to be made "with the involvement of the political authority because they're the ultimate authority over this."

The building collapsed just days before a deadline for condo owners to start making steep payments toward more than $9 million in repairs that had been recommended nearly three years earlier, in a report that warned of "major structural damage."

A federal team of scientists and engineers are conducting a preliminary investigation at the site and will determine whether to launch a full probe of what caused the building to come down. The National Institute of Standards and Technology also investigated disasters such as the collapse of the twin towers on 9/11, Hurricane Maria's devastation in Puerto Rico and a Rhode Island nightclub fire that killed 100 people. Previous investigations have taken years to complete.

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Associated Press writers Adriana Gomez Licon in Miami, Freida Frisaro in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Bobby Caina Calvan in Tallahassee, Florida; Julie Walker in New York and others from around the United States contributed to this report.

At least 159 people were still unaccounted for Friday morning, after part of a 12-story residential building in Surfside, Florida, collapsed early Thursday, authorities said.Search and rescue teams have been feverishly scouring the site near Miami since shortly after 55 of the building's 136 units fell at about 1:30 a.m. Thursday.Some of those missing may not have been at home; those who were may not have survived the collapse, which left just rubble and dust.Here's what we know about some of the missing.Family of Paraguay's first ladyThe sister and brother-in-law of Paraguay's first lady, Silvana López Moreira, live with their three children on the 10th floor of the partially collapsed building, and Paraguay's ministry of external relations has not been able to locate the family, the ministry told CNN en Español.A total of six Paraguayans are unaccounted for, the ministry tweeted Thursday.Nine Argentines, including a couple and their daughterArgentines Andrés Galfrascoli, 45, his partner Fabián Nuñez, 55, and their daughter, Sofía Galfrascoli Núñez, 6, are among the missing, according to a friend.Galfrascoli, Nuñez and their daughter were on vacation in Florida staying at the condo of a friend, Nicolás Fernández.Fernández told CNN he spent time with the couple Wednesday night and made plans to meet up Thursday morning."We don't know anything, we don't have any closure and that's what hurts," Fernández told CNN.Fernández has looked for his friends in local hospitals with no luck.Nine Argentines were missing as of Thursday afternoon, the country's consulate in Miami said on Twitter.Venezuelans missingBrian Fincheltub, Venezuela's consular affairs director, tweeted the consulate has identified four of its citizens who are not accounted for and who were believed to be in the building.Jewish community members missing, rabbis saySome members from The Shul of Bal Harbour synagogue are among the 99 people unaccounted for, Rabbi Sholom Lipskar told CNN."This is something that transcends our capacity for understanding," Lipskar said about the collapse. "It's a reality, we accept it and we have to learn as we do in our culture of resilience to move forward."The outpouring of support has been unprecedented, Lipskar said."There are way more volunteers than we can use. Our synagogue big hall, which is a giant space, is filled with blankets, pillows, microwave ovens, chargers, food. It is an extraordinary outpouring and it's real and it's sincere," he said."The only thing that helps in these times is kindness and empathy and togetherness, because you can't take away the reality," Lipskar said, and for each family member waiting for news from a loved one, there are about five or six community members with them, giving support.Members of the synagogue believed to be missing are Nancy Kress Levin, Jay Kleinman, Frankie Kleinman, Arie Leib, Yisroel Tzvi Yosef and Tzvi Doniel, according to Lipskar.Rabbi Eliot Pearlson, who leads Temple Menorah, told CNN's Chris Cuomo, "It's hard to explain. This doesn't happen in America. It's doesn't happen in Miami Beach. It doesn't happen in our homes. And it's very difficult to comprehend how it's possible."Pearlson said that he saw people come together in compassion following the collapse, and his temple will host an emergency prayer service on Friday.Three generations of one family from his temple are of the 99 people unaccounted for, he said.He added, "I have to tell you, when I walked past ground zero, there was row after row after row of firefighters who are literally waiting to rush into a building that could fall at any time."Uruguayan citizens missingThree Uruguayan citizens are among the missing, according to the consulate in Miami.The consulate is in contact with local authorities and with the families of the people missing, said Consul General Eduardo Bouzout."The relatives are very concerned, of course, because they have not been able to contact them since they have knowledge of this tragic collapse," said Bouzout in audio shared by the consulate with CNN.Missing mother and grandmotherA woman who said creaking noises woke her up in the building the night before the collapse is missing, her son, Pablo Rodriguez, said.Both his mother and grandmother were in the section that collapsed first, and the family hasn't heard from them, Rodriguez told CNN."You always hold out hope," he said. "Until we definitively know, we are trying to stay hopeful. But after seeing the video of the collapse it's increasingly difficult, because they were in that section that was pancaked in, in the first section that fell in, and then the other building fell on top of it, so it's not easy to watch."Rodriguez said he and his mother didn't really think anything about the creaking noise."It was just a comment she made offhand, that's why she woke up, and then she wasn't able to go back to sleep afterward — but now in hindsight, you always wonder," he said.The family is still holding out hope for good news, Rodriguez said."We are praying for a miracle, but at the same time trying to be as realistic about it as possible," he said. "Until we definitely know, there is hope. It's just dwindling by the minute."The Patel familyVishal Patel, his wife Bhavna Patel, and their one-year-old daughter Aishani Patel are believed to be among the missing, their niece Sarina Patel told CNN, adding that Bhavna Patel is four months pregnant.Cassondra StrattonCassondra Stratton, the wife of Michael Stratton, senior policy advisor with the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, is among those still believed to be missing, his law firm's spokesperson Lara Day told CNN.Judy SpiegelKevin Spiegel, who lived in Champlain Towers with his wife, Judy, said he was on a business trip in California when the building collapsed.When he woke up in the middle of the night, he had an emergency notice on his phone, he told CNN, and he notified the rest of his family."We're very hopeful that the community here will be able to find our loved ones," said Josh Spiegel, Judy's son, who lives in Orlando."My mom is an absolutely amazing person," Josh Spiegel said. "She's a fighter, and she fights for every single one of us, and we won't stop ... fighting until we find her," he said."We have a lot of hope that Judy is still alive, and still there," said Kevin Spiegel. "She's an amazing person."