SEATTLE – The Seattle monorail is rolling again. Regular 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. service has resumed after $3 million in repairs.
The monorail has been shut down since Nov. 26, when its two trains sideswiped each other on a curve.
New doors for the trains were made by the set creators for the Seattle Opera. Insurance will pay for most of the bill, the city said Friday.
The repair project included one big improvement: an automated stopping system to prevent collisions. During the monorail’s downtime, Seattle Monorail Services also performed systemwide maintenance and improvements. Structural columns were cleaned, inspected, sealed and repainted.
Associated Press
The process of lifting the deck sections onto the new Tacoma Narrows bridge was delayed for more than a month by mechanical damage some workers are convinced was sabotage.
Two workers aboard the Swan, the ship that carried the deck sections from South Korea, say 16 motors in hydraulic winches used to move the ship back and forth at anchor were ruined by handfuls of loose screws and washers placed in oil inlets. All the motors had to be replaced, the sources said.
Neither worker wanted to be identified, saying they feared losing their jobs.
Erin Hunter, a spokeswoman for the bridge builder, Tacoma Narrows Constructors, said in an e-mail response to questions about the incident that it would be “inappropriate to speculate” about how the screws got into the motors.
TNC is not regarding the incident as sabotage, Hunter said, and did not report it to any law enforcement agency.
The News Tribune
FBI agents have arrested two active-duty Fort Lewis soldiers and have issued an arrest warrant for a third in connection with a bank robbery in Tacoma this week, the agency said Thursday night.
Alex Blum, 19, and Chad Palmer, 20, have been charged with one count of armed bank robbery each, according to the FBI. A warrant has been issued for Luke Sommer, who is also stationed at Fort Lewis and who should be considered “armed and extremely dangerous,” the FBI said.
Officials say Blum, Palmer, Sommer and two other men entered a Bank of America shortly after 5 p.m. Monday wearing ski masks and brandishing handguns and rifles. They forced people in the bank to the floor and took an undisclosed amount of money, according to Tacoma police. The group fled in a silver-colored vehicle.
Investigators traced the vehicle’s license plate number Fort Lewis, said Tacoma police detective Chris Taylor.
The News Tribune
A man described as possibly the biggest methamphetamine dealer in the south Puget Sound area is behind bars after marshals tracked him down in Oregon.
Alden Michael Yale, 33, is accused of smuggling between 20 and 60 pounds of meth into the region each week, possibly from Mexico, according to records filed Wednesday in Thurston County Superior Court.
Yale used his drug earnings to buy as many as 17 vehicles, establish a trust fund for his son, bolster his retirement account and pay his mortgage, court records say.
He faces a charge of leading organized crime – a class A felony that stems from 23 other criminal counts that involve illegal drugs, money laundering, threatening witnesses and more, court records show.
The News Tribune
Aris, a 6-year-old Pomeranian that in June helped sniff out a murder suspect has gone missing. His owner, 68-year-old Dona Smith of Bellevue, is distraught.
“I’m hurting. That dog is my life,” said Smith, who otherwise lives alone in her home in Bellevue.
Aris won fame the morning of June 27. Smith woke up at 5 a.m. to watch a live World Cup game, but Aris began barking at the door to a guest room.
In the room and in bed was a man later identified as John D. Spencer. He had broken into her house the previous night after he allegedly stabbed George Estephan to death a few blocks away from Smith’s home.
Spencer remains in jail awaiting trial.
Aris disappeared Monday, and Smith believes a visiting plumber accidentally let him out.
None of the shelters in King County had seen him, she said, and neither had her neighbors.
King County Journal
A 1995 GMC pickup with a California license plate was found submerged in Capitol Lake on Thursday, and Washington State Patrol detectives are investigating how it got there.
Two U.S. Department of Agriculture employees hit the pickup with their oar while canoeing in the lake about 9:30 a.m., rounding up geese for a once-a-year culling, General Administration spokesman Steve Valandra said.
Once a Thurston County sheriff’s dive team declared the pickup empty and determined the vehicle’s make and model, a tow truck hauled it out of the water.
The pickup hasn’t been reported stolen, and detectives are trying to reach the vehicle’s owner, said Sgt. Monica Hunter, State Patrol spokeswoman.
The Olympian
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