It was a loud noise and a “boom” that told Wanda Hall something was wrong when her family’s SUV and took the looping exit off Washington Street onto Interstate 20 on their way home to Texas on Feb. 21.

“We knew it was the tire,” she said by phone Friday, home safely in Keller, north of Fort Worth, but about $240 lighter in the wallet because of an issue marshals in Delta say is all too common. “My son, Andy, was driving. He’s a good driver — he’s a cop in Sacramento. But, I guess he just got too close to the curb and boom! He was like, ‘Oh, my God, did I hit the tires?”

After a trip to Laurel to visit her mother, they set out in the family car, a 2010 GMC Yukon, with Wanda Hall, her son, husband Harry, daughter-in-law Nora and 18-month-old granddaughter Avery. After the tire hit the curb on the approach to the westbound exit ramp where about a foot of rebar is exposed and the impact shredded the passenger front tire, said Delta Marshal David Beckham, who helped change the tire. The town marshal’s jurisdiction extends six miles east from the Louisiana state line.

“I’d say 90 percent of the flats on the bridge are because of that,” Beckham said. “I don’t know if they’re hugging the curb too tight, but we’ve worked about 20 of them in the past three months.”

The family spent a frantic few minutes in the shoulder of the westbound lane as marshals Beckham and Sam Kennedy dealt with the spare tire, she said.

“Nora is pregnant, and we had our granddaughter in the car,” she said. “Needless to say, we were quite upset. Thank God one of those fast-moving cars didn’t hit us.”

A fix is on the way, officials with the Mississippi Department of Transportation assure, though it’s tied up in a multimillion-dollar makeover of the interstate through Vicksburg.

The Washington Street/Warrenton Road exit is included in the project that would widen six miles of I-20 between there and the Clay Street interchange, rebuilding each exit along the way. Total costs are pegged at $100 million, though it’s expected to approach $1 billion once all work is done.

No timetable for construction is set, but a public hearing is expected “early next summer” after an environmental study is complete and sent to the Federal Highway Administration, Central District Commissioner Dick Hall said. Jackson-based Neel-Schaffer Inc. is doing the study. Study and designs were funded through 2011 at $2 million.

“Everything in there will be redesigned,” Hall said, adding a final hurdle for engineers is an acceptable design for the Indiana Avenue exit, currently a mishmash of inlets for drivers where turns from North Frontage Road and Indiana aren’t arrow-protected.

Both frontage roads would be turned to one-way streets while the interstate is being widened, according to two alternatives presented in a public hearing in Vicksburg in 2009. The difference between the two plans is what will happen afterward — one version keeps traffic westbound on North Frontage Road and eastbound on South Frontage Road, while the other returns to two-way traffic.

A flyover ramp would replace a lefthanded exit onto U.S. 61 South from Halls Ferry Road, plans showed. Underpasses just east of Halls Ferry Road and near Porters Chapel Road would link the two frontage roads. South Frontage Road would be extended over rail tracks near the Outlets at Vicksburg, part of the plan for which numerous parcels along Porters Chapel and Old Highway 27 were purchased by the state last year. Plans also showed wider approach ramps onto I-20 from Clay Street.

Beckham said the marshals have notified the state and city about the problem, one that is on state right-of-way. Details of complaints tend to run together for MDOT, Hall said.

“(The public) calls me about everything you can imagine,” he said. “One guy told me that he owned the highway and he could prove it with the deeds.”

“You have a wonderful welcome center in Vicksburg,” Wanda Hall said. “We’re not sue-happy people, but I would like to get paid for the tire. Surely, the city does not want its good name ruined.”