Vicksburg officials aren’t sure how to handle a steel beam that is blocking a portion of the sidewalk and a parking space at 713 Clay St., near Washington.

City attorney Lee David Thames Jr. said it might be Friday before the city decides how to remove the hazard.

Because the building site is in litigation, Thames said, city officials have to be cautious how they approach the problem. He added, however, that the city might be able to declare a public safety emergency to remove it.

“I’m going to look at the statutes to see what we can do,” he said.

The beam, which helped support what is left of the 140-year-old building’s front wall, fell Monday as the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee passed through the area. It ran west from the entrance to the last remnants of the building, which collapsed in January 2006.

Along with blocking the sidewalk, it damaged the chain-link fence closing off the site. The entrance is leaning, propped up by a steel beam on its east side.

Vicksburg Buildings and Inspection Department Director Victor Gray-Lewis said an initial inspection of the site indicates that high winds from Lee knocked the beam from its perch.

Gray-Lewis said acting Public Works director Garnet Van Norman was expected to examine the site today.

“I want to get a second opinion. Garnet’s a civil engineer,” he said. “After he looks at it, we’ll meet and find the best way to handle this.”

Lee’s rain and high winds hit the area over the Labor Day weekend as the storm crossed into Louisiana and then passed south and east of Vicksburg. The National Weather Service gauges at the Vicksburg-Tallulah Airport recorded wind speeds ranging from 13 to 28 mph, with gusts from 24 to 36 mph from just after midnight until almost 2 p.m. Monday.

Larry Walker and his wife, Linda, owners of Adolph Rose Antiques, which is adjacent to the site where the building collapsed, said the beam fell about 4 p.m.

“We heard a little thump,” Walker said, adding he went to check the noise and saw the beam.

“We had rain and the wind was blowing; you could see the trees bending,” Linda Walker said.

Adolph Rose building owner Malcolm Allred, who lives in the building, said it shook when the beam fell.

“I heard a crash, you could tell something big fell,” he said.

Walker said city workers later arrived at the scene and put yellow safety tape around the area. Orange cones on the sidewalk and the street surrounded the beam Tuesday afternoon.

The collapsed building was the subject of a 2 1/2-year lawsuit between the city and building owners Preston and Mary Reuther that was resolved in 2008. A second suit was filed in 2010 by Lisa Ashcraft, who with her husband, Randy, owns the former First Federal Savings and Loan building at 1221 Washington St., which shared a wall with Thomas Furniture.

An agreement between the city and the Reuthers in 2008 opened the door for the building’s demolition to resume. Ashcraft’s suit halted it.

When the city and the Reuthers settled their case in June 2008, Preston Reuther hired Antique Wood and Brick Company of Mississippi to complete the demolition.

The Ashcrafts’ March 25, 2010, suit against the Reuthers, the city and Antique Wood and Brick Co. owner Bill Greenwood stopped the demolition because of what the Ashcrafts called a potential threat to their property. Nothing has been done to the property since a March 30, 2010, injunction halting the demolition was granted in Warren County Court.

Reuther said in July that a company called Downtown Vicksburg Investments Inc., a limited liability company, now owns the land.

The company’s officers are not listed in its records filed with the Mississippi Secretary of State, but its St. Joseph, Mo., address on the Warren County tax rolls is the same as the Reuthers’.