According to police, four people were killed in a fiery
wreck which occurred Thursday night on a bridge that extends the U.S Mexico
border.
The accident on the 3.2-mile Pharr-Reynosa
International Bridge
in South Texas affected two tractor trailers
and three other cars, according to the sayings of police Lt. Lupe Salinas.
He said that the accident occurred just after 7 p.m. and
that the tractor trailers were coming from different directions, the Associated
Press reports.
According to Salinas,
three people lost their lives after their vehicle has fallen from the bridge
and dropped on the other road.
Due to the collision with a tractor trailer another person
has died.
Rescuers were searching for other possible victims. Salinas said that the
cause of the accident was still being investigated.
The fire was put out, according to Pharr Emergency
Management Coordinator Elsa Sanchez, Houston Chronicle informs.
She said that personnel from the cities nearby responded to
the call.
It seemed like there were other injuries too, but none of it
was life-threatening.
The victims were yet not identified by the police. There was
no information regarding their genders, ages or nationalities.
The vehicle that plunged from the bridge was a pickup truck
bearing a Texas
license plate.
Salinas
said that the tractor trailers and the other vehicle, a minivan, had Mexican
license plates.
He said: "Right now we're trying to clean up the debris
that we have on the bridge, investigate the accident, reconstruct the accident
and recover the bodies."
According to spokesman Felix Garza for the U.S. Customs and
Border Protection, the bridge was closed in both ways. Also crossers were being
diverted.
Normally the bridge is closed between midnight and 6 a.m. The
bridge will be reopened on Friday at 6 a.m.
The structure of the bridge didn’t suffer any damage from
the accident, according to the sayings of assistant bridge director, Fred
Brouwen.
This bridge is the fourth-largest commercial vehicle in Texas. Every day about
1,700 trucks and 7,000 cars cross it from Mexico
to Texas,
according to Brouwen.
He said: "This is basically the second accident in the
15 years we've had the bridge."
The bridge has one southbound lane and three northbound lanes.