In case you are planning on heading east, you should know there is a serious two-vehicle crash not too far away — West Marginal South and South Holden (map) – at least three people reported to have major injuries, including a baby, per scanner traffic from medics rushing them to the hospital. Don’t know the circumstances yet; will add links as we find them, to anyone covering in person. 7:32 PM UPDATE: The P-I has published a short item that says West Marginal has reopened to traffic.

Regardless of whether you live inside or outside city limits, the future of King County Public Health affects you. The funding concerns were among the issues we discussed with County Council Chair Dow Constantine in our interview after his County Executive candidacy announcement recently, and we’ll discuss it with his opponent Larry Phillips later this week. Now comes word they and their council colleagues will take it up at a Town Hall meeting next week – read on:Read More

We know more than a few WSBers work in SODO – so you might be interested to hear about a new neighborhood-news/info website we were just tipped to: SODO Agogo (sodoagogo.com). Co-founder Sean tells WSB he and his co-site operators all work at Year of the Monkey but are determined to promote other area businesses and to report on “pretty much anything happening down here, so we can get the information out in front of people, whether it be neighborhood sales, city meetings, transit reroutes, or whatever else.”

It’s been some months since our logs showed people landing on WSB by searching Google for “Nicholas Francisco,” the Seattle man who vanished one year ago. (His disappearance was a West Seattle story for a while because he and his wife had attended church here, and friends here put up posters all over the area.) But today’s logs suddenly show a few of those searches, and an e-mailed link explains why: On the anniversary of his disappearance, his wife gave her first TV interview in many months (see it here), claiming she found evidence of a “secret life” – but also saying, she just wants to know, is he still alive? As for law enforcement – the missing-person case is still open.

REVISED AT 10:26 PM: The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network has taken the 9 pm Kitsap County earthquake reading off its map. “False reading,” according to this Twitter update from NWCN, which is where we heard first word of the alleged quake (and then checked it out on the PNSN site before posting anything here). Have never seen a report “canceled” like that but we’ll just go back to not reporting quakes until our inbox is full of “we felt it” reports … (Eric B explains further in this comment.)

(January 8 photo by C. Simmons)
Eight days ago, we told you about the huge fire that gutted Pacific Sheet Metal and adjoining music facility The Dutchman on the south side of the Spokane Street Viaduct section of the West Seattle Bridge, still smoldering when many West Seattleites passed it hours later on the way to work. Seattle Fire Department spokesperson Dana Vander Houwen now says investigators have finished their work, and determined that the fire started in the engine compartment of a truck in the PSM building. Damage total: $4.2 million. A relief fund for the music studio’s owner continues to accept online donations; haven’t found a link to any such fund for PSM – let us know if you know of one (editor@wsb.blackfin.biz). FRIDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: Got a note from Nancy, who doesn’t know of relief efforts but does know that Pacific Sheet Metal’s owners are a longtime West Seattle family – founder William Zaknich lives on Alki; son Nick Zaknich, who runs the company now, lives in Shorewood.

Last night KING5 TV broke the story that the P-I would be put up for sale as a possible precursor to closing. People at the paper expressed surprise, as they hadn’t heard this. Today, however, this has just appeared on the P-I’s online home page, confirming it:

The Seattle P-I newspaper is being put up for sale. Steve Swartz, president of Hearst Newspaper Division, told the newsroom that Hearst Corp. is starting a 60-day process to find a buyer. If a buyer is not found, Swartz said, Hearst will pursue other options. The options include moving to a digital-only operation with a greatly reduced staff, or completely shutting down operations. In no case will Hearst continue to publish the P-I in printed form, Swartz said.

(Update: It’s now on the P-I site in article format; second update, here’s the Hearst news release.) We want to add a personal note that we would hate to see the P-I go, for one major reason: It has by far led the way in Seattle in presenting online news and information on a citywide/regional basis, including recognition of the importance of collaborating with the people formerly known as “readers.” (The P-I has also trailblazed in creating opportunities for its reporters to do coverage in blog format as well as traditional articles; among the stories it’s covering that way right now is the announcement that Boeing‘s Commercial Airplanes division plans thousands of job cuts this year – here’s the latest on the P-I site.)

2:45 PM UPDATE: Side note on this story, a little visual reminder that the news landscape has changed. Joe sent this screen grab from his check of Google News coverage on the P-I sale:

He hadn’t been aware that WSB stories are indexed in Google News. We announced that here last February. WSB was the first blog-format Seattle neighborhood-news site to get Google News indexing; several other sites achieved it within the past month or so.

(photo by C. Simmons)
If not for the massive flooding in the northern and southern areas of Western Washington, the Spokane Street fire at Pacific Sheet Metal early today (WSB coverage here) would have been a huge story for citywide media. Since they’re preoccupied, we’ll post a few updates here: No word on the cause yet – the latest update from Seattle Fire Department spokesperson Dana Vander Houwen says firefighters are working to get “a large amount of water” out of the building and its surrounding area, and once that’s done, investigators will be able to go in. (added 12:51 pm — you can see the water in this photo sent by C. Simmons)

Also, Seattle Police have posted a side note to SPDBlotter — In addition to closing the Spokane Street Viaduct (the stretch between Highway 99 and I-5) during the height of the fire, they also had to stay with an unusual group of evacuees – residents and staff of the high-security sex-offender detention facility on the other side of the SSV had to be moved out for a few hours, and police stayed with that group until they were allowed to return to the building around 4:30 am. We’ll post another update here whenever the Fire Department has more investigation info (just saw a short TV update, finally, but it was the same info we posted nine hours ago). 12:32 PM UPDATE: City Light says it’s now restored power to all but one of the customers that have been without it since the fire.

We tweeted about this a couple times earlier this morning – it’s not technically in West Seattle and we thought it would be over before anybody much was affected – but a couple notes have come in so we’d better post it here too. The eastbound Spokane Street Viaduct is closed off while firefighters battle what an SFD spokesperson calls “a 2-alarm fire” at a “metal-fabricating warehouse” on lower Spokane Street. We happened to be coming back from downtown after midnight when we saw the roadblock and the billowing smoke. Helen Fitzpatrick of SFD says flames were shooting from the 1-story warehouse’s roof at 111 S. Spokane St. (map) when fire crews arrived; one firefighter’s slightly hurt, nobody was in the building, no word yet on a cause. If you drive eastbound to I-5, you’re likely to see the fire scene smoldering to the south during your morning commute. Here’s the fire vicinity, in a Google Street View photo:

3 AM UPDATE: One new bit of information from the fire department since we first posted – the fire was under control as of 2:30 am. The investigation has not yet started, but fire crews will be there all night. Seattle City Light had to turn off power to the surrounding area and more than 400 “customers” are without power at the moment as a result.

Longtime WSBers know we are a bit Blue Angels-crazy here when Seafair rolls around at summertime. So we are sharing the news that one Blue Angels jet (#7) and two pilots (#7 and #8, Lt. Ben Walborn and Lt. Amy Tomlinson) are expected to land at Boeing Field sometime around 1 this afternoon (time may vary) for “winter briefing meetings.” This year’s Seafair air shows will be July 31-August 2. (P.S. Lt. Tomlinson may be the first Blue Angel we’ve found with a MySpace page; here’s her official bio. As #8, she serves as event coordinator, though as you’ll see in her bio, she’s a pilot with a distinguished resume. The Angels have not yet had a female pilot in the six-member main team; the USAF Thunderbirds have had at least two, as we side-noted in this story.)

We hear some West Seattleites got stuck in this backup earlier tonight: At one point, three lanes of southbound I-5 were closed just before the West Seattle Bridge exit because of what WSDOT’s alert called “a police investigation.” According to KING5‘s 11 pm newscast (though we’re not finding this replicated online yet), someone standing or walking on the freeway was hit and killed. In e-mail asking about the incident, after spending time in the resulting backup, Tracie wrote, “We saw a pair of tennis shoes on the pavement with a spray-painted circle around them, and a forensic unit on site.” WSDOT just sent an update saying all lanes are open again. 2:33 AM UPDATE: Washington State Patrol has sent the incident report to media; two cars hit the 44-year-old Shoreline man who was killed (his relatives have not yet been notified so his name isn’t to be made public at this point) who was “walking (on) southbound I-5 just north of 6th and Forest … attempted to cross south lanes of travel … struck by (both) vehicles.” No word so far why he was walking on the freeway.

The Oregonian in Portland published this story online last night, but we just caught the link through a Twitter mention — the aftermath of their city’s even-more-epic snow. Notable revelations: Portland plows NO secondary streets, but does have 50 snowplows (almost double the Seattle number). However – this earlier article suggests they had some plow trouble and bus trouble too.