Fatal I-5 wreck snarls traffic in Federal Way

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, October 2, 2001

FEDERAL WAY – A fatal two-truck collision early Tuesday blocked all southbound lanes of I-5 in Federal Way and snarled traffic at the start of the morning commuter rush.

An empty semitrailer rig from Market Transport of Portland, Ore., rear-ended a large dump truck loaded with asphalt at the S. 320th Street interchange, Washington State Patrol Trooper Monica Hunter said.

The driver of the semi, a 60-year-old Rainier man, died in the crash. The dump truck driver, who was slowing to deliver asphalt for a road-widening project on the left side of the southbound lanes, escaped injury.

By 6 a.m. the crash had caused a long backup of southbound traffic, which was detoured over the entrance and exit ramps. The lanes were reopened about two hours later.

Fishy package: There was something fishy about the four packages that caused a bomb scare in this Vancouver Island town. Two boxes in Christmas wrapping were found outside a Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce branch, one addressed to President Bush, said Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Brian Brown. Two similar packages were found in a nearby park. A bomb squad, summoned from Vancouver, used a remote-controlled machine to investigate the packages and take X-rays, which showed there were no bombs. When the officers opened the packages, they found jars of home-canned salmon.

Love and lawsuits: Courtney Love has sued Geffen Records and two musicians from her late husband’s band Nirvana to invalidate a 1997 agreement over the group’s body of work, her lawyer said Tuesday. Love claims the deal with Nirvana bandmates David Grohl and Krist Novoselic was signed by her under distress and has resulted in mismanagement of the music by Geffen, according to her attorney, Barry Cappello. Love said the company does “not value the cultural heritage and financial value of (the band’s) music enough to act competently in handling basic paperwork related to it,” according to the claim filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court. Love is the widow of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, who committed suicide in 1994.

Mercury lawsuit: A coalition of law firms went to courts across the nation Tuesday to force the pharmaceutical industry to begin immediate studies on whether vaccines containing a trace of mercury cause autism or other brain damage. The class-action lawsuits were led by an Oregon woman who says her 3-year-old son became autistic after his last series of vaccination shots. “We had a happy, healthy little boy until that last set of shots,” Tory Mead said. “It’s been devastating. Our lives have been shattered.” Mead warned parents to make sure their children are vaccinated, despite the lawsuit. She noted doctors and drug companies are phasing out shots containing mercury, which was used as a preservative.

Oil spill: An oil spill on the trans-Alaska oil pipeline is more than twice as big as first reported, according to state environmental officials. As workers restarted the pipeline after a scheduled maintenance shutdown Sept. 22, 2,037 gallons of oil were released through an open emergency relief valve at a pump station. Most was contained inside the building. About 200 gallons spilled onto the gravel pad around the building, Ed Meggert of the state Department of Environmental Conservation said Monday. Two days after the spill, officials with Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., which runs the pipeline for the oil company owners, estimated that 800 gallons spilled.