A late night fire Tuesday destroyed a cabin at Chotard Landing on Lake Chotard in Issaquena County, Issaquena County fire coordinator Larry Short said Thursday.

Short and Danny Cogan, assistant Northeast Volunteer Fire Department fire chief, said the fire call came in about 11:55 p.m. Tuesday and Issaquena County sheriff’s deputies reporting the fire and asking Northeast for assistance said the house was engulfed in flames. No one was at the cabin, officials said.

Fire departments from Eagle Lake, Northeast and Mayersville responded to the blaze.

Cogan said firefighters had to put water on a nearby house to protect it from flames as they fought the blaze, which was built on pilings to avoid damage by floods. Officials said took about 1 1/2 hours to extinguish the blaze. The cause is undetermined.

Chotard is north of Eagle Lake and located on the river side of the mainline levee system protecting the area from the Mississippi River. It is accessible by two routes from Eagle Lake:  Mississippi 465, which runs along the levee and then along the top of the levee, or by taking U.S. 61 North to Low Water Bridge Road in Sharkey County and approaching Chotard Landing on 465 from the north.

For people going to Chotard from the south, Mississippi 465 from Eagle Lake is the shorter route, but sections of that route are presently blocked because of a construction project on the levee.

And although that construction was not a factor in the destruction of the house, firefighters and Chotard owner Jerry Johnson said the levee system work between Eagle Lake and Chotard Landing has prevented residents and visitors from using Mississippi 465 to reach the area and makes it difficult for emergency responders to reach the area quickly from the south.

“There used to be an asphalt road up there, but that’s been taken up,” Warren County fire coordinator Jerry Briggs said. “You can get there (to Chotard from Eagle Lake) all right with a pickup truck.”

Greg Raimondo, public affairs director for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District, said construction crews are elevating the levee. He said the project has been underway for more than a year.

He said the work has blocked 465 in spots, making attempts to drive along the levee difficult.

Short said Mayersville, the closest volunteer fire department to Chotard, can reach the area by using 465 north of Chotard, but Mayersville is about 30 miles from Chotard, making Eagle Lake the closest fire department to the area.

But Briggs said the Eagle Lake Volunteer Fire Department is restricted on what equipment it can put on the levee because of the construction. Most of the trucks coming from Warren County departments have to take the longer route along U.S. 61 North to Low Water Bridge Road and approach Chotard from the north.

Cogan said it took about 45 minutes for Northeast’s pumper and grass truck to get to the fire, adding they arrived just after Meyersville.

“They need to put us an access road to get here,” Johnson said, adding the levee road “is the way everybody knows to come, and 85-90 percent of my business is coming from that direction, and it’s killing me. I’m losing 85 to 90 percent of my business.”

He said three to four people live at Chotard Landing permanently, adding the majority of property owners there have camps they use on weekends and holidays.

Raimondo was unable to give a date when the work will be completed.

“A lot of it depends on weather,” he said. “If the contractor can get in there and get work done that’s great.”

He said the level of the Mississippi also plays a factor in the completion date, “And the river is supposed to go a lot higher. That National Weather Service 16-day forecast has it going above flood stage in the middle of January.

“There’s (project) areas in there so low, we get backwater flooding,” he said. “There’s a lot of water in there now.”