So you dont have to. I went down to main street to see the damage from the building collapse on Main street. -Darrell Lucas
From Middletown Patch: Mike DiPiro clearly seemed to feel he was the luckiest man alive.
DiPiro co-owns an accounting firm, Guilmartin, DiPiro & Sokolowski, at 505 Main St. He was on the second floor when he heard something crack on the floor above. He and an employee, Chris Conley, went up to investigate.
The century-old brick building, a former school, had a gym on the third floor. DiPino and Conley got there just in time to see 2-foot thick ceiling beams bending and cracking. "I said 'Chris! Run!' and we grabbed our jackets and ran in front of Luce where we called 911."
DiPiro and Conley were the only ones in the building. At around 10 a.m., as they watched firefighters string caution tape along the front of the building, they heard another crack. The third floor crumpled into a cloud of brownish dust.
"A fire guy said 'Run!' and we ran; we were lucky we didn't get hit by bricks." A fireman's helmet fell off and was crushed in the rubble.
Force from the accumulated weight of snow, ice and rain on the building's flat roof sent bricks flying every which way; some were flung nearly all the way across Main Street. Later, a block away, a man shoveling snow off the roof of the building housing Esca restaurant at Main and Washington streets came across some of the bricks.
"I thought it was the sturdiest building," DiPino said. "It used to be a bomb shelter."
"I hope our insurance agency is good: Providence Mutual and The Hartford," he added, laughing.
The first floor of the building housed Middletown Framing, Mike's Barber Shop and Tesoro Unique Treasures & Gifts.
By 1 p.m., police had roped off portions of Main Street from Liberty Street to the north all the way south to Court Street (including the front of the Capitol liquor store). Washington Street was closed from Broad Street to DeKoven Drive.
Next door, Luce restaurant and the Salvation Army headquarters were evacuated. A three-block area of Main Street teemed with firetrucks, police, firefighters, building officials, squad cars, bulldozers, dump trucks and graders.
CL&P and Yankee Gas were called to the scene to shut off the power and gas. By 5 p.m., the gas had still not been shut off.
Nearly 100 residents from buildings across the street at 472 and 478 Main St. were abruptly evacuated. Mayor Sebastian Giuliano said the buildings, of "comparable age and design," were evacuated out of concern for residents' safety.
Several residents sat in three buses that idled in Main Street just north of the site. Giuliano said they would be taken to Middletown High School for temporary shelter.
Some residents had reported hearing creaking rafters in 472 Main St.
"I have all my IDs and everything upstairs; they didn't let us go in to get anything" said Heather Myjak, who lived on the second floor of 472 Main St. She said when she got up in the morning and walked into the hallway outside her second-floor apartment, ceiling tiles had fallen and garbage cans had been placed around to catch the leaks.
Farther up the street, Christine Grover was standing outside her apartment building with her 12-year-old son Chad Jubinville. She'd gone out front to talk with her boyfriend, Jay Martin, who was clearing the sidewalk outside Liberty tax office when she said she heard a crackling "like when you're driving over ice and snow."
She looked up and saw "a cloud of smoke that went out from the building; it was brownish red." Then, she said, she saw the building go down.
She said the bricks narrowly missed vehicles traveling down Main Street.
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5 story building collapse on construction workerby 3arabusa38,935 views
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