The deadly collapse of an oceanfront apartment building in Surfside, Fla., just outside Miami on June 24 could end up being one of the worst such disasters in U.S. history. Here are other fatal incidents:
Jan. 28, 1922: The Knickerbocker Theater in Washington, D.C., collapsed during a silent movie exhibition. The incident occurred two days after the biggest blizzard in the city’s history. The building’s roof buckled in from the weight of the excess snow, killing 98 and injuring 133. The packed house may have had as many as 1,000 people inside at the time.
Jan. 25, 1971: 2000 Commonwealth Ave., a luxury condo building that was under construction, collapsed in Boston. Four workers were killed and 30 were injured. A commission later found low-quality concrete had been used in some areas of the building.
Aug. 3, 1973: The University Hotel at 673 Broadway in Greenwich Village collapsed, killing four, because walls in the basement had been illegally altered. Inside the building, the Mercer Arts Center, at the time one of the city’s most progressive performance spaces, was destroyed but had not yet opened for the evening’s events. The site was later demolished, and New York University bought the land and put up a 22-story dorm.
March 27, 1981: The Harbour Cay Condominium building in Cocoa Beach, Fla., east of Orlando, collapsed hours before construction was expected to be completed, killing 11 workers and injuring almost two dozen others. The five-story waterfront fell “like a house of cards,” one witness told the Orlando Sentinel.
July 17, 1981: The second- and fourth-story walkways inside the Hyatt Regency hotel in Kansas City, Mo., collapsed onto the lobby, killing 114 and injuring 200. Around 1,600 people were in the atrium of the building at the time for a Friday night dance party. The incident remains the deadliest non-deliberate structural failure in U.S. history and has become a common case study in engineering classes.
April 23, 1987: L’Ambiance Plaza, a 16-story apartment building in Bridgeport, Conn., collapsed during construction, killing 28 workers. The ensuing years saw a $41 million settlement for the victims’ families and a federal investigation into the lift-slab construction practice.
Jan. 17, 1994: During the 6.7 magnitude Northridge earthquake, the largest concentration of deaths occurred at the the Northridge Meadows apartment complex in California when the building collapsed onto the parking area below, crushing first-floor units and killing 16 people. The incident revealed how vulnerable buildings with “soft-story construction,” large open areas on the ground floor, are to seismic activity.
May 18, 2000: A portion of the pier at Club Heat, a nightclub at Pier 34 in Philadelphia, collapsed into the Delaware River killing three women, co-workers from the Camden Aquarium. Both the owner of the pier and the club later faced a number of charges and reached plea deals to avoid prison time.
June 5, 2013: A four-story Philadelphia building being demolished collapsed onto a one-story Salvation Army store next door, killing six and injuring 14. The construction contractor and excavator operator were later convicted of involuntary manslaughter. The city building inspector who had examined the demolition site before the incident died by suicide a week after the incident.
Oct. 12, 2019: The Hard Rock Hotel under construction in New Orleans partially collapsed, killing three workers and injuring dozens of others. Survivors allege that unsafe building practices were used and there was insufficient support for the structure. More than a year later, the site and several surrounding properties were demolished. In April 2021, multiple adjacent streets finally reopened.
