Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
It was just three months after the Helle Crafts case, in late April 1987, when Andy used cada-
ver dogs for the purpose that the U.S. Army and the Southwest Research Institute originally
envisioned: a major disaster, the worst in modern Connecticut history.
Twin sixteen-floor concrete buildings under construction in Bridgeport collapsed.
L'Ambiance Plaza fell in seconds. Within hours, Andy and Lady, along with four other Con-
necticut state troopers and their dogs, were on the scene, facing a mountain of broken con-
crete slabs, twisted steel, and iron rebar. Dogs and men inched across the pitched slabs of con-
crete. The troopers and workers carried spray paint and flags. The German shepherds would
alert, giving the general location of body after body, sometimes on open holes, sometimes at
the edge of the pancaked slabs, where scent could escape.
Though it was early on, construction workers and their families were becoming aware that
the scene was less a rescue operation than a recovery operation. Twenty-two workers were in-
jured, some badly, but they were the fortunate ones: blown of the edges of the slabs by the
force of the collapse as the floors pancaked down. The dogs alerted time after time after time,
inhaling concrete dust. Then the cold spring rain started, tamping down the dust and making
footing even more treacherous, intensifying the cold glare of the floodlights on the massive
rubble pile.
The dogs helped find all twenty-eight victims. Italian-American, African-American, Irish-
American workers, their bodies so broken that Andy said he had never seen so much damage
on human bodies, before or since. And Andy has seen almost everything that humans, or
nature, can do. “It still haunts me,” he said.
L'Ambiance Plaza still angers him. Quick, cheap—and dangerous. It still angers me. In a
minor twist of fate, Andy and I realized nearly a quarter century later, when we met face-
to-face, that we had probably passed each other on that site. Andy was managing the dog
searches for days, until the last body was removed. I was there only one night as a newspaper
reporter for the
Hartford Courant
. All disasters, by nature, are terrible, but it was the worst
disaster I had ever covered. I played only a brief role one freezing day and night, tasked with
standing by in case more injured victims, or bodies, were recovered. Reporters and investig-
ators came to understand that something had gone disastrously wrong with a construction
system hailed as an efficient, economical way to raise a building. After the accident, lift-slab
construction was temporarily banned. The ban is no longer in place; nonetheless, lift-slab
construction is rarely if ever used in the United States.
That Andy and I didn't meet during those terrible days in Bridgeport probably didn't
change the course of my life. I doubt I would have decided, at that point in my newspaper
career, to start training dogs to do search work. That would wait until I was solidly middle-
aged.
