FEDERAL WAY – A 14-mile-long “traffic nightmare” ensnared northbound commuters on I-5 Friday afternoon after 60 gallons of diesel fuel spilled in a collision, state Transportation Department officials said.
The spill resulted from a collision between a tanker truck and a car at 2:53 p.m. at the State Route 18 exit, officials said. All five northbound lanes of I-5 were finally reopened shortly after 6 p.m., once the spill was cleaned up. No serious injuries were reported.
At the peak of the traffic jam, the backup stretched all the way to Tacoma, Transportation Department spokeswoman Michell Mouton said.
Seattle: TV pioneer Jack Fearey dies at 84
Jack Fearey, an award-winning Pacific Northwest television pioneer who helped establish two major civic festivals and oversaw key additions to the Seattle Center in 12 years as director, has died at age 84.
Fearey died July 21 after a long illness, said Aaron Blank, an account supervisor at The Fearey Group, a public relations company founded by Fearey’s wife, Pat.
Fearey earned a music degree at the University of Washington and worked at radio stations in Bellingham before coming to KING-TV in Seattle. He went on to win a Peabody Award for his work on the children’s show “Wunda Wunda.”
In 1970, then-Mayor Wes Uhlman appointed Fearey as director of the Seattle Center, a civic complex on the site of the 1962 world’s fair. His 12 years at the helm included the origins of Bumbershoot, the city’s principal arts festival, held over the Labor Day weekend, and the Northwest Folklife Festival, held over the Memorial Day weekend.
Spokane: Man leaps from downtown bridge
A man whose threats to jump from the busy Monroe Street Bridge in downtown Spokane prompted police to close the roadway for some 20 hours leaped from the span Friday afternoon, police said.
The man, who appeared to be in his 30s, had been talking with police, but jumped about 3:30 p.m. Paramedics rushed to the man after he landed on rocks near the Spokane River below the towering bridge. His condition was not immediately known.
Vancouver, Wash: Jury awards $4.5 million
A jury has ordered Kaiser Permanente to pay $4.5 million to the widow of an artist and photography instructor who died of a brain tumor that went undiagnosed for more than seven years.
Following 16 hours of deliberations over three days, the Clark County Superior Court jury decided late Tuesday that negligence by the health-care provider led to the death of Craig D. Pozzi, who taught photography at Clark College before his death on Nov. 12, 2004, at age 61.
“I’m in shock,” Angela Haseltine Pozzi, an artist who was married to Pozzi for 25 years, said Wednesday. “It’s not like you can celebrate.”
Jurors were told during the two-week trial that Pozzi sought treatment in 1994 for feelings of fear that lasted as long as a minute, beginning in his abdomen and rushing to his head. Doctors testified that if the tumor had been diagnosed at that time, he could have lived 15 to 25 years.
Lakewood: Man sought in beating death of son
A 3-month-old boy died after being beaten, investigators in the Pierce County medical examiner’s office have ruled, and his father was being sought by police in this suburb south of Tacoma.
The baby, who was identified Friday by the medical examiner as Trumane C. Sao, was pronounced dead late Wednesday night after being taken by ambulance to St. Clare Hospital. The next day, the death was declared a homicide by abuse after investigators found the child had a lacerated liver and broken ribs.
The child’s 18-year-old mother told police she had left the family’s apartment to smoke a cigarette late Wednesday after arguing sporadically with the 23-year-old father, then returned to find the baby struggling to breathe and noticed a bruise on his stomach.
The father admitted punching the baby twice in the stomach, she told officers.
Idaho: Vandals deface hill at state mansion
Maybe they could put a big fig leaf over it.
Vandals late Wednesday or early Thursday used herbicide to etch a giant 60-foot phallus in the grassy slopes beneath the Idaho governor’s mansion, a popular site where people ride ice blocks down the lawn as temperatures in Boise reach 100 degrees.
The portion of the hillside marred by the image belongs to the J.R. Simplot Co., the agricultural conglomerate that donated the hilltop mansion to the state in 2004. The mansion is currently unoccupied – Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter lives on his Star, Idaho, ranch – and awaiting renovations.
Officials with the Simplot company, which maintains the hillside, planned to treat the damaged grass with a material that’s ordinarily used to repair blemishes on golf courses.
Oregon: State dumps idea of private toll road
A proposal for a bypass around a crowded state highway through Oregon’s wine country will have to be scaled back after a consultant said tolls wouldn’t raise enough money to build a private road, state officials said Friday.
The idea of a public-private joint venture also has been set aside for now.
The proposed 11-mile Newberg-Dundee bypass of part of Oregon 99W in Yamhill County has been in the works for years, but its cost is currently estimated about $500 million.
The department said Friday that price tag is “is beyond what any of the funding mechanisms, public or private, can support at this time.”
Associated Press
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