Truck tire bounces off interstate, sets Mississippi visitor’s center on fire

DESOTO COUNTY, Miss. (WREG) — A loose tire that rolled off the roadway sparked a fire inside of a Mississippi building in a freak accident Sunday, Oct. 20, WREG reported.

The DeSoto County Visitors Center was closed after the tire popped off a tractor-trailer traveling down Interstate 55, bounced off the freeway, went through a fence and down a hill, and crashed through a window, where it smacked into a file cabinet full of paper and set it ablaze.

People said the tire was so hot that the tire and papers burst into flames, causing enough damage that staff would have to move temporarily.

“It’s crazy," said Delbert Palmer, mitigation manager of Landmark Construction. "It’s something you don’t see every day. I’ve seen in the news in the past about a tire coming off and hitting something, but I’ve never witnessed the aftermath of it.”

No one was in the visitor's center offices when the tire broke off its tractor-trailer late Sunday night, so there were no injuries.

"You know, the building is the building," said Kim Terrell, executive director of DeSoto County Tourism. "It’ll come back, but there’s just way too much to be thankful for."

The tourism offices would move to the nearby Landers Center until repairs could be made. Terrell said cleanup and repairs would probably take a couple of months, at a minimum.

“It’s probably going to take a while," Palmer said. "There’s extensive damage. We’re just here now to prevent secondary damage.”

Despite the damage and scary situation of what could have been, the tourism offices weren’t seeking a massive change.

“It was just one of those things that we think is a once-in-a-lifetime thing," Terrell said. "We’re not going to worry about it from this point forward.”

The driver of the truck with the missing tire got the truck off the road without any accident or issues.