Gilmore Remembers L’Ambiance Collapse

On April 23, 1987, one of the worst construction accidents occurred on Washington Avenue just off the Route 25-8 Connector Downtown. OIB correspondent John Gilmore reflects on that day when he was a scribe for the Bridgeport Post, predecessor of the Connecticut Post.

On April 23, 1987 I was in Boston attending an awards ceremony with other people from the Post and Telegram when the word came. L’Ambiance, 10 floors of a planned 16-story, lift-slab construction style housing development in Bridgeport had collapsed and more than 25 men (actually, 28 men we later learned) were believed to have perished as the floors of concrete, 45 tons each, came pancaking down.

After seeing the first scene on a television, we all ran for our cars and raced back to Bridgeport. The newsroom was a madhouse when we got there. Reporters and editors were trying to find a reason for the collapse. Was it weather? Soft ground? Poor steel? One theory that floated around was that the building was atop an old Indian burial ground.

I went to the disaster site and quickly learned that access was limited. But I still wanted in. I got my hands on a hardhat, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and the late Superintendent of Police Joseph A. Walsh slipped me through a side gate.

“You’re on your own,” he said as I went through the gate. “They don’t like the media,” he said of the construction workers inside.

The scene was horrific, twisted steel beams, mountains of concrete and smoke continuously billowing out of crevices in the rubble. It was dark outside in the real world, but in the disaster site flood lights rigged on the beams still standing kept the place awash in a surreal illumination.

I struck up a conversation with the handler of a cadaver dog, specially trained animals that were used in all sorts of disasters.

“Do you think they’ll find anyone alive?” I asked about the dogs on the scent of a blood trail.

He gave me a sad, knowing look.

“Ten floors of concrete, 45 tons to a floor, collapsed on those guys on the first level,” he said. Not likely.”

No, not likely, I thought. Considering the human body is about 70 percent liquid it didn’t seem likely the rest of the human body of bone and tissue would survive much better.

“How will you identify remains?” I asked. Remember, this was 1987, long before 9/11 and high-tech identification processes.

“Well, if find a pair of jeans we look for the back pocket. We slice through the pocket and if we’re lucky, we find a wallet and a driver’s license. Then we have an ID of one person.”

A splotch of who knows what and a crushed wallet was what some families got back that April in 1987.

Of course, the rescuers always hoped the concrete fell in a way as to create a cave and someone was still trapped inside just breathing the dusty air waiting for rescuers. But that didn’t happen.

Construction workers from all over the region converged on Bridgeport to help. I saw one team of dusty iron workers who left another job in New York City to come to Bridgeport. They were the most somber and serious men I ever saw and they came to help brother iron workers they never met. Tired and in a strange city, all they wanted to do was help. They declined to be interviewed by several news organizations. They only spoke quietly among themselves and with a man serving as the supervisor of volunteers who descended on the scene.

But while an event like L’Ambiance can bring out the best in people, it can also bring out the worst in people. It can bring out a mean side where some people make unrealistic demands because they believe they are the only ones hurting.

I saw this happen when a few bodies were recovered. Steps were being taken to remove the deceased from the disaster site. Television cameras from all over the region were jockeying for position outside the fence. One film crew took a position on the roof of a small apartment building across the street. They planned to film downward on the removal of bodies being brought up a driveway.

Below and inside the disaster site, workers formed an honor guard as the bodies past. As soon as the last ambulance was loaded, one worker organized a gang of iron workers in a line facing the street. Iron workers use a unique hammer with a short stubby handle and a heavy thick metal head. This guy wanted about 25 guys to throw their hammers up at the television crew on the roof.

It was a disaster in the making.

Finally the men were convinced the TV crew was up too high and those hammers were destined to fall back to earth and cause more injuries to innocent people. It took a few moments, but the ringleader was convinced of his folly. Thankfully, the hammers stayed snug in the tool belts of the men.

Years later, I met a reporter from the Kansas City Star who told me about his experience when a walkway in a downtown hotel collapsed and 114 people died and 216 people were injured. It was the deadliest construction accident in the U.S. until 9/11.

He talked about the death and the destruction. When it was all over, he told me, the newspaper brought in grief counselors for the staff.

“You must have gone through the same thing,” he said. “They took care of you, didn’t they?”

“We got pizza,” I told him.