SEATTLE – Rush hour freeway traffic was scrambled Friday afternoon by a rain squall followed by brilliant sunshine, conditions that caused a flurry of accidents and shut down part of I-5 south of Seattle.

At least 40 vehicles were involved in accidents that closed northbound lanes for more than three hours near Tukwila, KOMO-TV reported. Five people were taken to hospitals – one in critical condition – and more than a dozen others were treated at the scene for minor injuries.

Multiple fender-benders also were reported on southbound I-5 near Everett, and near Tacoma.

Meanwhile, at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, lightning struck a plane on the ground, slightly injuring a worker.

Thirty people were aboard the Horizon Air plane when lightning struck it about 2:20 p.m. as it was preparing to depart for Pocatello, Idaho, Sea-Tac spokesman Bob Parker said.

The injured man was working next to the plane, wearing a headset plugged into a jack on the side of the aircraft, Parker said. The man was conscious and alert when he was taken to a local hospital, the spokesman said.

Cheney

Bomb threat at college: Classes at Eastern Washington University were canceled Friday after three bomb threats were received, school spokeswoman Stephanie Pettit said. One threat arrived at the home of President Stephen Jordan early Friday morning, and two others were found at the Pence Union Building shortly before 7 a.m., Pettit said. She could not say how the threats were delivered. Classes were immediately canceled and the campus was searched by law enforcement officers with bomb-sniffing dogs, Pettit said. No bomb was found.

Rainier

Boy, 9, suspected of stealing car: A 9-year-old boy has been arrested for investigation of car theft while on probation following the theft of a dirt bike, Thurston County sheriff’s deputies said. The 4-foot-6, 71-pound boy was recognized as soon as he was caught Wednesday in this small town about 15 miles southeast of Olympia, sheriff’s Capt. Daniel Kimball said. Kimball said the boy apparently began driving around the neighborhood at 3:45 p.m. and within 15 minutes a caller reported the car stuck in a ditch. When a sheriff’s deputy arrived, the vehicle was back on the street and “he noticed there was a small person driving the car,” Kimball said.

Vancouver, Wash.

Man ordered back to mental hospital: John Kenneth “Jack” Stein, charged with trying to kill his father’s lawyer in 1988 to assure himself of a $3 million inheritance, has been ordered back to a mental institution. Stein, 64, brain damaged since a traffic accident in 1976, is incompetent to stand trial and must undergo examination and treatment for 90 days at Western State Hospital, visiting Cowlitz County Superior Court Judge James Stonier ruled Thursday. Stein was acquitted of murder in the strangling of his father’s longtime nurse and companion, Thelma Lund, in a bathtub in 1987 but was convicted of hiring four men who made three unsuccessful attempts to kill his father’s lawyer, Ned Hall, also in 1987. Prosecutors said Stein believed Lund and Hall stood in the way of a $3 million inheritance.

Sunnyside

Dead animals found on port property: For Port of Sunnyside employees, an occasional dead cat or cow is no big deal. After all, an access road through the property leads to the Darling International rendering plant. Late Wednesday, however, port officials were notified by rendering plant workers that the carcasses of 70 calves, three cows, two horses, a dog and four fighting chickens had been dumped on the port’s property. The market for rendered goods has been off since December, when the country’s first case of mad cow disease was discovered in a Holstein on a dairy farm near Mabton, six miles south of Sunnyside.

Alaska

Lawyers haul in most of salmon lawsuit settlement: Fishermen in a $1 billion lawsuit over alleged price fixing in the Bristol Bay sockeye salmon fishery will share less than $10 million of $40 million in out-of-court settlements, a judge ruled Thursday. The plan approved by Superior Court Judge Peter Michalski awarded $16.4 million to the plaintiffs’ lawyers and $13.8 million to defense lawyers. That left just under $10 million to be divided among nearly 4,700 Bristol Bay sockeye salmon permit holders, based on harvest poundage from 1991 to 1995.

From Herald news services