The final blasting of the Yazoo River bridge completed a three-phase demolition of the nearly 60-year-old bridge in Redwood Monday afternoon.

Despite rain, contractors used explosives to fell the south truss at 4 p.m. after dropping a large part of the north truss on Thursday.

“It appeared they (contractors) accelerated their schedule because they wanted to get ahead of the weather,” said Kevin Magee, District 3 engineer for the Mississippi Department of Transportation. Rain is forecast today and each day for the rest of the week.

It was not raining at the time contractors decided to move forward with the single blast for what remained of the bridge superstructure, but heavy rain moved in later in the afternoon.

Magee said the final blasting should complete the project of tearing down the old bridge, but he said there is still a little piece of the conventional span on the north truss that needs to be destroyed, but will not be blasted.

The first phase of demolition on the picturesque bridge that formed the U.S. 61 gateway to the Mississippi Delta was on June 30 and a second on July 2.

Next on the agenda is disassembling and cleanup of the remnants.

The new, 1,300-foot bridge has two 12-foot lanes and is 40 feet from side to side, 14 feet wider than the old one.

A pair of 8-foot shoulders flanks each lane, unlike the old bridge, which had no relief lanes. A companion bridge is proposed for the far future in place of the demolished bridge, but no plans have been released.

The project to build a new bridge, which included taking down the old one, began in 2006 and cost $33.5 million.

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Contact Manivanh Chanprasith at mchan@vicksburgpost.com