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NEW YORK (CBS) ― Rescue crews continue to search for survivors at the East Side construction site where a massive crane mounted to the side of a skyscraper under construction collapsed Saturday afternoon.

The 19-story crane damaged three buildings and completely destroyed a fourth. When emergency crews moved in, they found four construction workers dead, 17 people injured and at least one other still unaccounted for.

"I thought it was an airplane or something. The noise was tremendous," said neighbor Mike Geli.

"People thought it was a bomb going off...There was just a big cloud of smoke and you couldn't see anything," said witness Sal Abitino.

One man was trapped inside the collapsed brownstone for 3.5 hours before firefighters rescued him.

Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said rescue work was "painstaking," and that rubble was being removed carefully, sometimes by hand, to prevent further collapse.

The building that suffered the most damage was a five-story brownstone with a bar in the first floor that fortunately was closed at the time of the accident.

The 2:20 p.m. accident made an affluent Manhattan neighborhood look like a disaster area: Cars were overturned and crushed. A huge dust cloud rose over the neighborhood. Rubble was scattered along the streets and piled several stories high where the building went down.

Ben Galati, a 54-year-old doorman at a high-rise apartment tower across the street from the construction site, said he was in the basement when it happened, and ran for his life when he heard the structure smash into his building.

"I heard a rumble outside. I said, 'Let's get out of here!' And then the crane came down. A split second later, I heard an explosion," he said.

Residents who lived near the site, on 51st Street near 2nd Avenue, said they had complained repeatedly in recent months that the crane appeared precarious.

A devastated Jeanie Squeri told CBS 2 HD she lived in a destroyed building her whole life. "I just left the house one minute and the whole thing came down," Squeri said. "If I hadn't left I would have been in that building. I would have been in the building with my two cats."

Stephen Kaplan, owner of "Reliance Construction Group," which is managing the project - said a piece of steel fell and sheared off one of the ties holding the crane to the building.

"It was an absolute freak accident. All the piece of steel had to do was fall slightly left or right, and nothing would have happened," Kaplan said.

About 19 of the high-rise condominium building's 43 planned stories had been erected, and the crane was scheduled to be moved Saturday so workers could start work on a fresh story when a piece of steel fell and sheared off one of the ties holding it to the building.

Mayor Bloomberg held a news conference on the tragic accident. The dead were all believed to be construction workers.

"There is a lot that we do not know about why and what exactly happened, but you should know that we are using every bit of our efforts to conduct a rescue operation. And one of primary goals is to make sure that in doing that, we don't cause any further damage to adjacent buildings where people might be, or in that building that has the crane right on top of it," Bloomberg said Saturday.

John PlaGreco, who owns Fu Bar located in the building that was crushed, said he feared one of his employees was dead in the rubble.

"Our bar is done," he said. "The crane crashed the whole building. If I wasn't watching a Yankees game, I would've come to work early and gotten killed."

The crane split into pieces as it fell. Part of it came to rest against an apartment tower, buckling its facade and smashing it upper floors. That building and others in the area were evacuated. Another piece of the crane hit other buildings on the block, ripping away walls and ceilings and crushing a small building.

Crews will have to pull out the crane section by section so they can then determine why it collapsed.

Lt. Gov. David Paterson, who takes over as governor for disgraced Eliot Spitzer on Monday, praised firefighters for taking "great risks" as they navigated the twisted brick and steel of the ruins to search for victims.

"Although we lost four lives, there were Herculean efforts to save three others," said Paterson, in town to meet with senior staff members. "It's a horrible situation, very gory. There's blood in the street," he said.

Maureen Shey, who lives diagonal from the building where the crane collapsed, said she was on the phone laying on her bed when she saw the giant white crane heading straight for her windows.

"I heard a big crash, and I saw dust immediately. Bricks were flying through the air. I saw the whole thing. I thought the crane was coming in my window," she said.

The crane wound up missing her building, but others weren't as lucky.

Chopper 2 HD showed firefighters clambering through piles of rubble, several stories high, looking for victims.

Witnesses were reporting a strong smell of gas in the area. Some described the ground beneath the crane appearing to give way as it began to topple. Gas utility Consolidated Edison said it shut off service to area buildings.

Bill Reilly, a retired UPI reporter, said he was in his apartment a block away when it happened.

"First I heard a rumble, and it increased, and then it increased," Reilly said. "It continued building in strength until there was a final vroom! It shook the six-story brick building that I live in."

Police blocked traffic in the area. Onlookers crowded the streets, snapping cell phone pictures and stopping to point at the wreckage. Fire trucks filled area streets and chunks of the building littered the ground.

The catastrophe comes amid a building boom in New York City and follows a spate of construction accidents in recent months, including some involving cranes, though none as massive.

Earlier this year, a crane's nylon sling broke away and dropped seven tons of steel onto a construction trailer across from ground zero, injuring an architect. Last month, a worker at a Donald Trump hotel-condominium tower in SoHo plummeted 40 stories to his death when a concrete form gave way.

New York Crane was involved in a 2006 mishap, in which a 13-foot piece of a crane mast that was being dismantled fell into the street and crushed a taxi cab.

(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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