Safety concerns delay recovery of missing people

PORT ISABEL, Texas -- Safety concerns on Sunday delayed the work to recover victims missing since barges smashed a section out of a major bridge and dropped cars 85 feet into a shipping channel, killing at least five people.

The impact of the barges hitting a piling knocked two adjacent 80-foot segments of the Queen Isabella Causeway, which connects the popular South Padre Island resorts to the mainland, into the Laguna Madre channel early Saturday.

A third 80-foot section of the bridge collapsed Saturday afternoon, suspending recovery work indefinitely while engineers evaluated the structural integrity of remaining sections of the four-lane bridge, said Adrian Rivera, spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety.

"There's a concern with the structure and we don't want to put divers at risk," Rivera said early Sunday.

Officials said it could be late Sunday or even Monday before recovery efforts resumed.

An unknown number of people were missing in the 50-foot-deep Laguna Madre, part of the Intracoastal Waterway shipping route along the Gulf Coast, officials said. Thirteen people were rescued. The waterway was closed.

Michael Lorber was driving over the bridge when the barges struck.

He slammed on his brakes but his friend, Julio Mireles, drove off the end of the broken span.

After returning to the mainland, Lorber staggered up to another friend, sobbing "He's still in there."

The 2.37-mile-long span, the state's longest, is the only bridge leading to South Padre, a Spring Break beach destination that draws crowds of up to 200,000 students.