SUV flips at corner, killing driver, 19

Bellevue

A 19-year-old man from Bellevue was crushed to death early Saturday morning when the Ford Explorer he was driving crashed and flipped over.

Jose A. Mendez Gutierrez appeared to have lost control about 4:30 a.m. as he rounded a corner at the 134000 block of Lake Hills Connector, said Bellevue police spokesman Greg Grannis.

Police, called by a tenant in a nearby apartment building, smelled alcohol in the car. Toxicology tests are expected to determine whether alcohol was a factor in the crash, Grannis said.

A passenger, an 18-year-old also from Bellevue, was injured and transported to Overlake Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

15-year-old jumps from bridge, dies

A 15-year-old girl from the Seattle area died Saturday morning after jumping off the Aurora Bridge in an apparent suicide, said Seattle Police spokesman Rich Pruitt. The girl landed in a parking lot beneath the bridge.

Lake Union fire chars building, boat

An early morning fire at a Lake Union business charred a three-story building and a 60-foot boat parked inside.

The fire, at Ocean Alexander yacht sales office at the 1000 block of North Northlake Way, started just before 6 a.m. The source of the fire appeared to be an electrical failure, said Seattle Fire spokeswoman Helen Fitzpatrick.

Firefighters doused the blaze within 15 minutes, but not before it caused $300,000 damage to a commercial building that housed a dry dock. No one was injured.

It also damaged a yacht that was parked inside. The boat was valued at $750,000, but the owner had not determined yesterday whether the damage was merely cosmetic, Fitzpatrick said.

Rainier alert system struck by vandals

Vandals have destroyed part of a warning system designed to save lives in the event of a Mount Rainier eruption, a Pierce County official says.

It's part of the system that would help alert the 35,000 people in the Puyallup River Valley to dangerous lahars, or mudflows, which could be generated in the event of an eruption.

One of the five mudflow sensors in a heavily wooded area on private timberland on the Upper Carbon River Valley was vandalized, said Jody Woodcock of Pierce County Emergency Management.

Although the sensor is in a remote area, someone discovered the wires buried in the ground.

When the site was checked, "the toolbox was open and electronics were ripped out, wires torn apart, pieces on the ground," she told KING-TV. "The solar panel was shot with a shotgun and completely destroyed."

With another monitoring site down for technical problems, the system on the Carbon River is not working right now, KING reported.

County officials emphasized that Mount Rainier is quiet, and other parts of the warning system are operational.

Of the two major Mount Rainier drainages toward heavily populated areas northwest of the peak, "the Puyallup [River] drainage is the one that poses the greatest threat to people downstream, and that side of the system is fully operational and has no problems," Woodcock said.

Pierce County Emergency Management and the U.S. Geological Survey Cascades Volcano Observatory will be working together to get the complete system back online.

Times staff and wire reports