The bomb cyclone caused widespread damage and outages, costing tens of millions of dollars.
A year later, two major utilities in our area say they’re better prepared should we get hit with a similar storm.
KIRO 7 spoke with Puget Sound Energy (PSE) and Snohomish PUD about the changes they’ve made to help keep people safe and informed.
There were challenges from the get-go.
The bomb cyclone required a monumental response from utilities racing to repair equipment and restore power.
“911 calls we’re flooding in over the first couple of days of the storm. We had trees falling and knocking wires to the ground, poles broken,” said Ryan Murphy with PSE.
Crews worked around the clock, replacing hundreds of power poles and transformers.
“The damage was just so significant, and it created tremendous access issues, so it wasn’t just fixing the problem, it was actually getting to where the damage was that we needed to fix,” Kellie Stickney with Snohomish PUD said.
The utility companies say lessons were learned along the way.
According to Stickney, the work was more of a challenge because of communication issues.
“Our crew members who were out in the field didn’t have good Internet access to be able to use the tools they were provided, so now all of our trucks have Wi-Fi boosters so that a situation like this occurs again, they can stay in communication,” she said.
At the peak of outages, 450,000 PSE customers were in the dark.
It was a similar story for 166,000 Snohomish PUD customers.
For many, outages lasted more than a week.
After the storm, both utilities say they realized their outage maps needed improvement.
“Our outage mapping, the information on it was very difficult for customers to understand, and so for the last year we’ve been working really hard on our systems, our technology, both in the field as well as the Control Center,” Murphy told KIRO 7.
Snohomish PUD said they’ve made some significant improvements to the outage map since the storm.
“Customers can see the circuit they’re on, they can get more information about their outage, and now they can sign up so they can get a text message anytime they’re out,” Stickney said.
Both companies said they’re still working on making their systems and equipment more efficient and reliable.
“Each storm is different; each storm presents us an opportunity to get better,” Murphy said.
“I believe our crews and our support people did a great job responding to that storm, but I think we are better today than we were a year ago,” Stickney shared.
©2025 Cox Media Group
