Halfway down the hill, the bus loses traction and turns almost completely sideways, blocking the road. Still without traction, the bus begins to slide sideways down the hill, tilting dangerously close to flipping over. As the bus reaches the bottom of the hill, the bus driver is able to regain traction, straightening out the bus again.
“It was pretty normal at first, but then I started to feel the bus slip away from the curb. I could see that we were slowly drifting away, and then we heard this big bang when we hit the other side of the road. We kept on sliding back and forth until we got to the bottom,” freshman Daniel Flash said.
Route 77 managed to get to school on time, but many buses didn’t. When the school day began at Liberty, it became obvious that not many people had been willing or able to brave the frozen streets. Most classes had single digit attendance, and all class attendance stayed low throughout the day, even as more students began to trickle in.

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Meanwhile, a video of the bus sliding sideways down the hill had surfaced, and was making the rounds of Liberty’s student population. By the end of the day, Q13 and KING5 had both acquired the video, and by the end of the week, the video of the bus had made on ABC World News.
Combined with all the publicity about the bus came a more serious question: why had the Issaquah School District not delayed school?

In response to numerous complaints, ISD released a statement on why they chose to delay school, saying “the decision to make a change to the start of school needs be made by 6:00 a.m.” The district’s justification was that snow hadn’t started falling until after buses had been sent out picking up kids.
“My priority is making sure [students] are safe,” LHS principal Sean Martin said. “Yes, I want students to learn, but also I only want them to be here and learn if it’s safe for them to get here.”