L’Ambiance Plaza Collapse (Bridgeport, CT) 1987

The second major construction project industrial disaster to make this list occurred nine years later. The L’Ambiance Plaza was a 16-story residential project under construction in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Its partially erect frame completely collapsed on April 23, 1987, killing 28 construction workers. Failure was possibly due to high stresses placed on the floor slabs by the lift slab technique. There was a school of thought that this accident highlighted the deficiencies of lift slab construction. This accident prompted a major nationwide federal investigation into this construction technique, as well as a temporary moratorium of its use in Connecticut. L’Ambiance Plaza was planned to be a sixteen-story building with thirteen apartment levels topping three parking levels. It consisted of two offset rectangular towers, 63 ft by 112 ft each, connected by an elevator. 

At the time of collapse, the building was a little more than halfway completed. In the west tower, the ninth, tenth, and eleventh floor slab package was parked in stage IV directly under the twelfth floor and roof package. The shear walls were about five levels below the lifted slabs. The workmen were tack welding wedges under the ninth, tenth, and eleventh floor package to temporarily hold them into position when they heard a loud metallic sound followed by rumbling. An ironworker who was installing wedges at the time, looked up to see the slab over him “cracking like ice breaking.” Suddenly, the slab fell on to the slab below it, which was unable to support this added weight and in turn fell. 

The entire structure collapsed, first the west tower and then the east tower, in 5 seconds, only 2.5 seconds longer than it would have taken an object to free fall from that height. Two days of frantic rescue operations revealed that 28 construction workers died in the collapse, making it the worst lift-slab construction accident. 

L’Ambiance Plaza Victims

Each year our Fairfield County Chapter, along with IBEW 488, gather together to honor and remember those who left for but never came home from work on April 23, 1987. We gather each year to highlight the importance of workers' safety in their memory. 

"Pray for the dead. Fight like hell for the living." - Mother Jones