#L AMBIANCE PLAZA COLLAPSE PORTABLE#

''I saw it fall down like a deck of cards,'' said Steve Russo, a trucker who was passing. Witnesses yesterday told of a sudden cataract of concrete slabs, of huge green steel I-beams crumbling like tiny toys, of enormous clouds of dust and of buildings nearby that shook with the force of an earthquake when the project fell at about 1:30 P.M. Mayor Bucci said last night that Bridgeport had retained Lev Zetlin Associates of New York City, an engineering and design firm that has investigated several major construction failures, to study the building's collapse. It was believed to be the worst building collapse in the New York metropolitan region in many years. ''We've been waiting all these hours,'' she added. ''We're waiting to hear something, but we hear nothing,'' Victoria Rinaldi said, tears streaming down her face, as she and other relatives awaited word of her brother-in-law, Anthony Rinaldi, a 60-year-old carpenter.

#L AMBIANCE PLAZA COLLAPSE PORTABLE#

In a third, the sounds of a portable radio were heard, eerie and enigmatic. In one pocket, a victim was found alive three hours after the collapse. The slim hope was that survivors would be found in pockets formed by broken concrete slabs. Rescue teams moved rubble with cranes, bulldozers and blowtorches and scanned the crevices with dogs, microphones and flashlights. A Grim SearchĪs sobbing, grief-stricken relatives of the missing gathered at a disaster center nearby, the grim search for survivors and the dead continued all day and, under floodlights, all night.

Seven workers were hospitalized, one in critical condition, and four others were treated for minor injuries in the collapse of L'Ambiance Plaza, a project with state and private financing on the edge of the central business district of Bridgeport, Connecticut's largest city with 143,000 residents.

L ambiance plaza collapse