Bomb cyclone killed his mom at Lynnwood encampment. He was next to her

By Greg Kim / The Seattle Times

LYNNWOOD — Brian O’Connor and his mom set up the tent they were living in the day before the November bomb cyclone in the woods in Lynnwood, a spot they had never camped at before.

They had heard about the incoming storm and chose an area next to a large tree they thought would be sturdy enough to withstand the winds and cover them from any falling debris.

The night of the storm, which brought gusts up to 74 mph in some places, Brian said he and his mom, Deborah O’Connor, went to bed around 7 p.m. with the sounds of whipping winds and tree branches falling around them.

“And I heard a really big tree fall in the distance and it even shook the ground and I sat up,” Brian said. “It got quiet, all of a sudden, I felt something hit my head.”

It took him a moment to realize a tree had hit him and collapsed the tent. He looked over at his mom, and all he could see was her arm.

“I grabbed her hand, and nothing,” Brian said.

Deborah O’Connor, 65, died from the impact.

The violent winds toppled trees and power lines throughout Western Washington, causing power and internet outages for days and weeks for some. Deborah was one of the few killed in the storm.

People living outside like Brian and his mother are among the most vulnerable to severe weather. Exposure deaths are the most common symptom of this, such as the seven homeless people in King County who died from hypothermia in the span of one week during a cold snap in January.

Climate change will make events like the bomb cyclone more common, and homeless people will be among the first to feel the deadly impact. The King County Regional Homelessness Authority said it is updating its policy to open severe weather shelters for unusual weather like the bomb cyclone. Currently, the guidelines are mainly focused on extreme heat or cold.

Brian, 38, was likely saved because, just before the tree fell, the cacophony of the storm caused him to sit up. Still, the tree hit his back and shattered a vertebra.

For the past few weeks, he has been recovering from multiple back surgeries in the basement of his aunt’s home in Lynnwood, struggling to see what comes next, all the while haunted by memories of the night his mom died.

When he felt her hand in the tent, he knew he couldn’t help her.

He grabbed a knife lying next to him, which he had found earlier that day on the road, and cut his way out of the tent. Once he was out, he could see how large the tree that had fallen on his mom was — about a foot and a half in diameter.

He didn’t know his back was broken, and the pain hadn’t set in yet. He walked nearly 500 feet from the campsite to the road and tried to flag down cars for help. Even though he was wearing a neon tie-dye sweatshirt, no one stopped. Eventually, police and medics, whom one of the passing drivers had called, arrived.

The next day, he underwent multiple surgeries to push the fragments of his shattered vertebra back into place and had six screws, two rods and a cross bar inserted to realign his spine.

Dr. Jens Chapman, the spine surgeon who treated Brian, said he’s seen the same injury completely paralyze people and that Brian is lucky to be able to return to a “neurologically normal” state.

“I was impressed with this young man’s resilience,” Chapman said.

In the hospital, Brian reached out to his aunt Eileen O’Connor on Facebook, someone he hadn’t seen in five years, and she brought him back to her home in Lynnwood.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Eileen said. “I couldn’t possibly ever live with myself knowing that I was his only option.”

The weeks following Brian’s surgery have been challenging. The first night, Eileen and her husband woke up to the sound of his pain medication wearing off.

“In the middle of the night, I hear this horrible howling sound. I run down there and he’s on his knees, literally praying to the gods, because he’s in so much freaking pain,” she said.

The physical pain is just one part. For weeks, Brian has been thinking about his mom who he lived with outside on and off for the last five years.

Debbie O’Connor was a “really kind, caring person,” he said, someone who could make people laugh, someone who would share her food with other homeless people and let them sleep in her tent if they didn’t have one.

“She was like a mom to everyone,” her son said.

She also struggled with schizophrenia, which she was diagnosed with when he was 5 years old. The condition led to her divorce and eventual homelessness, according to Brian’s aunts. He said he joined her outside after he lost his job at a glass company and had to move out of his dad’s house due to a conflict.

Brian and Eileen sat on the couch in her basement where he has lived for the past few weeks. He’s shy and boyish, even at 38. He tucks his shoulders close to his body, making him look smaller than he is. His aunt wraps her arm around his waist.

“Do you think that part of you remained homeless because you didn’t want her to be homeless alone?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. He grew quiet, looking down.

“I love you,” she whispered, squeezing him tighter.

Eileen and her family see Brian’s survival as a miracle. The fact that he sat up at the last second before the tree fell. The knife he found on the road earlier that day which he used to cut his way out of the tent.

And two weeks before the night of the incident, a day before Brian’s birthday, Debbie had taken him to the Nest Mission in Lynnwood, an organization serving homeless people, for dinner and a sermon. There, she asked the pastor to pray for him. Her only request was that he be OK.

Eileen sees it as her duty to help him receive a new lease on life.

“I’m never going to let him be homeless again,” she said.

That’s his goal too.

“People don’t realize how much work it is” to be homeless, he said, to stay fed and be in places you’re allowed to be. And he doesn’t want to have to worry about rain or the weather anymore.

But there is a long road ahead to recover from a broken back and years of homelessness.

Living indoors is foreign to him. He sleeps on the floor. He hasn’t showered since he moved in. He waits to eat food until it gets cold since he’s used to eating sandwiches.

“I have to let him know he doesn’t have to eat all the crumbs, like, seriously, crumbs off my floor. It breaks my freaking heart. I have to let them know that isn’t all the food there is,” Eileen said.

She said caring for Brian has been a 24-hour job and said the hospital should have kept him longer or transitioned him to a physical rehabilitation facility.

“It’s so much. It’s so much and I don’t know. Hopefully, I don’t have a nervous breakdown,” she said.

Brian said he wants to eventually live on his own, but he has no idea what it will take to get there. He doesn’t use drugs recreationally and wants to work, but he doesn’t know what his body will allow him to do. He has a criminal record, trespassing charges, from times he was looking for warm places to stay inside, he said.

Another aunt set up a GoFundMe to raise money to get Brian his own place. They plan to use the money to pay for an apartment in Lynnwood where they can check on him regularly. But they don’t know if that’s the right option for him or if he should be in a group home with other adults learning social and life skills. And Eileen is desperate for help.

“This is not a Brian problem. This is not an O’Connor problem. This is a societal problem,” she said.