A steel plate plummeted 18 stories into a ballfield full of children at the site of the new Goldman Sachs building near Ground Zero yesterday - the latest in a series of serious construction mishaps to plague the Big Apple, officials said. Miraculously, no one was hurt when the 30-inch by 30-inch plate fell from a construction elevator at the accident-prone site on West Street, across from the World Trade Center site at 3 p.m. A stop-work order was issued immediately by acting Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri, who took over in April after former Commissioner Patricia Lancaster resigned in the wake of a slew of construction accidents that left 15 people dead this year alone. The metal plate was being used as a bridge between the elevator and the building for unloading materials. Workers were using it and the elevator to bring sheet rock to the 18th floor. The contractor, Tishman Construction, did not have approval to deliver the wall covering. The company was allowed to work on the weekends. The $2.4 billion project, which is expected to be completed next year, will house 9,000 of the investment bank's employees. The mishap was the second in five months for the troubled site and Tishman, which was issued five violations for the breach, including failing to protect the public and property and failing to secure vertical netting. In December, seven tons of aluminum wall studs fell from the building, crushing a construction trailer and paralyzing architect Robert Woo. LiMandri called the latest incident "unacceptable." "Development cannot come at the expense of workers and the public," he said. A $4 million probe was launched into "high risk" construction practices in the wake of Lancaster's resignation. Tishman spokesman Richard Kielar declined to comment. Last year, eight people were hurt when a construction bucket at the Bank of America tower, a Tishman site, fell to the ground. In 2006, a section of a crane fell 250 feet on Third Avenue at another Tishman site, crushing a taxicab and injuring five people. Three more people have died this year so far in construction accidents than in all of last year. The deadliest incident came in March, when seven people perished after a massive crane broke loose from an East Side building that was under construction. Six of the victims were construction workers and the other was a woman who was crushed when her brownstone was pulverized. In January, a laborer fell 42 stories to his death at the site of the future Trump Soho, on Varick Street, after a scaffolding full of wet, heavy concrete gave way. The general contractor at that site was the scandal-plagued Bovis firm, which oversaw the demolition of the Deutsche Bank building at Ground Zero where two firefighters were killed last August when a standpipe malfunctioned during a major fire. Also earlier this year, a window washer was killed and his brother critically injured when a scaffold plummeted more than 40 stories off a building. Another worker was killed the same day in The Bronx after heavy equipment pinned him while he was digging a hole to lay pipe.

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