More pushing and cutting began this morning on the sunken bean barge lodged below the Interstate 20 bridge across the Mississippi River for more than two weeks, and Louisiana transportation officials confirmed an initial step to shore up the structure.

Crews spent much of Wednesday getting a barge holding a crane and chisel into the safest position to start breaking up the partially submerged container — a job that lasted until 5 p.m. before the huge blade was dropped. Efforts to cut the barge with the force of the falling chisel and recover what’s left of the barge were suspended at about 7:15 p.m. Most recent estimates by the Coast Guard had the job going through Friday, at the latest.

Swirling currents on the river since the barge broke away from a 30-barge tow March 23 may have deepened a 100- to 110-foot “scour hole” just south of the bridge, said T. Marshall Hill, district engineer for the Louisiana Department of Transportation & Development’s Monroe district. The barge strike “may not have caused it, but it would affect the slide” of piers measured in stability studies commissioned by the agency in the past decade, Hill said.

LDOTD has contracted with multistate contractor Luhr Bros. Inc. to fill the depression with 2-ton boulders, a job that will cost $750,000, Hill said. Waterway traffic was halted while salvage crews with Big River Shipbuilders and Salvage were on the water. Traffic on Interstate 20 flowed without interruption, though restricted in the eastbound lane.

Onlookers at the Mississippi Welcome Center were fewer in number than the day following the incident.

“You couldn’t get people in Dallas out here for something like this for more than 15 minutes,” said Mark Gibbons, of Dallas, who watched the action on the river for hours with his wife, Charlotte.

The Mississippi River at Vicksburg stood at 41.5 feet this morning, down four-tenths of a foot. It crested at 43.3 feet March 31, above the 43-foot flood stage for the third time in four years.