Half of the bean barge stuck below Interstate 20 for three weeks disappeared Monday below the falling Mississippi River.

Work to recover the half facing the navigation channel continued today without word on when the salvage mission that began 21 days ago would end.

A cable on the crane supporting a chisel used to cut the barge snapped over the weekend, delaying a lift-and-cut operation originally planned to end Friday, Coast Guard spokesman Lt. j.g. Ryan Gomez said. The barge ran aground below the bridge March 23 and sank when a 30-barge tow broke apart on rising water, the second barge strike in Vicksburg in four days up to then and the fourth overall on the Lower Mississippi.

Wind-driven rain suspended work around 3 p.m. just after the half of the barge nearest the Mississippi bank vanished with the day’s final cut.

“If the tug had pushed on it a while longer, I think it could have worked,” said Albert Smith, fleet manager for Ergon Marine, perched on the veranda of the Mississippi Welcome Center catching his third week of updates via radio from co-workers.

“I’ve worked around the river for a long time, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Jimmy Hayden of Baton Rouge, one of scores who have watched the mission from the rest area in the past three weeks. “The crane doesn’t look big enough.”

Updates on the operation from the Coast Guard have ceased since it began in earnest Wednesday. Waterway traffic restrictions have remained in effect, save for a barge loaded with rocks stationed along the Louisiana bank.

The Louisiana Department of Transportation & Development contracted with multistate contractor Luhr Bros. Inc. for $750,000 to fill a depression believed to have become deeper due to currents swirling off the barge with 2-ton boulders. Tugs owned by Marquette Transportation spent much of the first week after the incident trying to push it off the pier, but were called off when too much vibration on the bridge was detected by stability sensors.

Traffic on Interstate 20 has remained open, though restricted in the eastbound lane.

The Mississippi River at Vicksburg stood at 37.8 feet this morning, down eight-tenths of a foot. It crested at 43.3 feet March 31, above Vicksburg’s 43-foot flood stage for the third time in four years.