A year after trees fell on two Issaquah schools during a powerful bomb cyclone, the district is using lessons learned to strengthen infrastructure and improve emergency planning following the unprecedented weather event that left the community struggling with extensive damage and prolonged outages.
It has been one year since a powerful bomb cyclone swept through western Washington, with Issaquah amongst the hardest-hit communities.
Schools and neighbourhoods suffered extensive damage, and much of the Issaquah School District was left without power and internet for days.
“The bomb cyclone itself was a pretty unprecedented event with so many impacts on communications, operations, and daily life,” stated Superintendent Heather Tow-Yick.
When the storm struck, roads were blocked, trees crashed onto school roofs, and nearly every school building lost power, forcing closures for several days.
“We had to go quite old school and ask people to tell their neighbours and to use word of mouth to make people understand that we were closed and had limited communications,” Tow-Yick recalled.
Two schools near the Issaquah Commons were hit especially hard. The Holly Street Early Learning Center and Issaquah Valley Elementary both had trees fall on top of the buildings. One classroom had to be relocated whilst repairs were made.
Power and internet outages left families struggling, with students scrambling to find places to charge devices or access the internet, and teachers were unable to send out assignments.
The district is now using the lessons learned to improve infrastructure and prepare for future storms.
“We’re coming up for a renewal in our levies in February. It’s important we maintain and sustain our work and that set of levies will help with our critical repairs and capital projects,” Tow-Yick stated. “We are always modernising our HVAC systems and keeping our power systems up to date, so when these events hit us, we can recover more quickly.”
Meteorologist Rich Marriott noted that whilst storms like the 2024 bomb cyclone are dramatic, there is no clear evidence they are becoming more frequent.
“We only tend to see a few every decade,” he stated. “It’s a pretty small data set, and we really don’t have good data before 1960 when we got satellites, because a lot of stuff happened out in the Pacific we never know about, unless a ship happened to go underneath it.”
Even rare storms can have major consequences, and the superintendent indicated human connections make a difference during these events.
“Relationships matter. When we have hard moments, we can check in on each other and figure out what we can share to help lighten the load and navigate a tough situation,” Tow-Yick stated.
The damage from the storm cost the district roughly $1 million.
A year later, Issaquah schools are continuing to strengthen infrastructure, enhance emergency planning, and ensure the community is better prepared for the next major storm.
The one-year anniversary of the bomb cyclone that devastated Issaquah schools provides an opportunity to assess both the immediate impacts of the unprecedented weather event and the longer-term infrastructure and planning improvements the district has implemented to reduce vulnerability to future severe weather events that climate scientists suggest may become more common even if specific storm types like bomb cyclones remain relatively rare.
The superintendent’s reflection that the district had to resort to “old school” word-of-mouth communication when modern digital infrastructure failed illustrates the fragility of contemporary communication systems that depend entirely on continuous electrical power and internet connectivity. Schools, like most institutions, have become so dependent on digital communication channels including email, text messaging, social media, and website updates that the simultaneous loss of power and internet created a communication vacuum where officials struggled to inform families about closures and safety information.
