"Barges hit Miss. River bridge
By Andrew Nelson
ajnelson@clarionledger.com
And Brian Albert Broom
bbroom@jackson.gannett.com
VICKSBURG - A line of barges struck a bridge over the Mississippi River in Vicksburg on Thursday evening, causing an enormous fire and temporarily shutting down traffic on I-20.
There were no reported injuries.
“It was absolutely spectacular,” said Paul Ingram, an architect who lives in a house overlooking the Mississippi River. “I have never seen anything like this.”
About 9 p.m. a line of barges struck a pier of the old bridge, which holds the tracks of the Kansas City Southern Railway but no longer handles automobile traffic, said Lt. Davey Barnett of the Vicksburg Police Department.
The barges, carrying crude oil, ignited. At one point, the flames stretched almost the entire width of the river, said Herman Smith, the superintendent of the Vicksburg Bridge Commission.
Smith had been concerned about two gas lines that cross the bridge. They appeared to be undamaged.
The bridge was built in 1930 and about 18 trains cross it daily. The company that built it will inspect it today, Smith said.
Several small boats with searchlights scanned the surface of the water.
Traffic on both bridges was shut down. But the interstate was reopened after it was reported that the barges had struck only the old bridge. There was a train on it when the impact occurred but the railroad company has not reported any injuries, Barnett said.
Ingram said he went outside just before 9 p.m. when a neighbor called.
He could not see the barges, but he saw the fire, sitting on the surface of the river and filling the night sky with orange light and black smoke. About 10 minutes later and a half-mile downstream, the fire appeared to break into four or five separate blazes that drifted downstream with the current.&q