Letters to the Editor
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Extreme conditions affect mental clarity
During a several month stay in Phoenix I read many heat exhaustion obits. People who die from heat exhaustion often do strange things before they die.
I was particularly struck by the story of a firefighter and athlete found dead sitting under a tree in a stranger's backyard-- within view of a working water spigot. This wasn't someone who died in the outback, far from civilization, but someone with training who died during their regular afternoon run through the suburbs.
One big lesson to take away from both the Kim and Mt. Hood tragedies is that it's never a good idea to separate from your group. It's very dangerous to be alone and unsupervised in harsh conditions.
An obvious deficiency in the 'warning' signs that the Kims passed is that none of them included the word 'warning' or 'danger'. While someone familiar with Oregon's conditions may know that "snow drifts" are inherently dangerous, it's just not obvious from the signs that this is the case.
I agree with the overall tone of the article, and that any changes made need to be reasonable. Many parts of Arizona require "backcountry permits" which provide a definite turnover of responsibility from the state to the individual and specifically mark certain areas as "at your own risk". Oregon might do well to come up with a specific designation for their semi-maintaned roads.
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Why would he do this??
I live in a community just east of the foothills on the edge of the Livingstone mountains in southern Alberta. There is a short cut when travelling south west. The road is wide gravel at the start, but narrows and winds as you move further west. By the the time you've completed the 30 mile trip and hook up with another paved highway, you are on switchbacks and loose gravel. The alternative is paved highways with broad shoulders.
When considering short cuts such as this, wouldn't one begin by asking if the road is paved? Then consider the weather, the time of of day and one's familiarity with the region. Top it off with the fact you have your small children with you. Above all, safety first.
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Shaming and blaming and the tragic death of James Kim
Ms. Keech you have made several good and several obvious points about the folly of legislating solutions on the basis of unusual and tragic events, but that's not the big story of the Kims tragic trip into Oregon's Rogue River Wilderness. I think Spencer Kim's letter is a reasonable characterization of the many challenges facing the search effort, though I agree the solutions suggested are far too expensive to justify the handful of lives this might save over many years. Better to spend on life saving measures that have a much higher return on the investment of tax dollars.
But that is _not_ the big story here!
As a southern Oregon local and long term resident of the region the Kim Family story capitivated me from the beginning. This interest has become almost obsessive as I blogged the event - almost play by play - as "Joe Duck".
The Kim story is the triumph of a mother and children surviving the wilderness after nine days, and a father heroically challenging that wilderness in an unsuccessful, tragic hike to save them. It's the story of an enormous and sometimes heroic search and rescue effort that was well intentioned at all times, but plagued by many of the bureaucratic forces that are likely to be proposed as the solution to future problems in Oregon. Perhaps more than anything the Kim Story is remarkable because it has touched the lives of millions around the world, millions who saw in the Kim's happy family their own family and the life-shattering consequences of a single wrong turn on what appeared to be a passable road.
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Why blame the press, when the attention fed the search?
I'm amazed that Spencer Kim is blaming the press aircraft for interfering with air searchers, when it was the total press blitz that resulted in the clues that got Kati Kim and her children rescued in the first place. The Kim family and their friends did a great job of publicizing the search, but the press is a two-edged sword. If you do your best to grab the attention of the press, you can't turn around and complain about the unfortunate side-effects.
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Salon owes it to its readers
Salon owes it to its readers to make up for the Keech article by posting at least a link to the article on the front page of The Oregonian today. It goes over the results of the official study diagnosing exactly what went wrong in the search for the Kim family. It includes a firsthand account from Kati Kim. The article sums it up well when it says that although the Kims have been portrayed at times as urbanites making mistakes in the woods, the blow-by-blow look shows that they made a series of decisions that seemed logical at each juncture. The article contains facts about road conditions and why the family made the assumptions they did, and I suspect many of the people reading this would change their tune pretty quickly if they had access to this information. The study of the search points out what Keech didn't want to admit - there were serious problems with this search effort by the paid search and rescue personnel. No one can know whether they would have found the Kims earlier without those problems, but at least now they know what the problems are and how they can try to fix them. I believe this is what Spencer Kim was attempting to point out.
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Well...
It seems Spencer Kim had it right, at least according
to the recent information in the Chronicle. Moreover,
you seem to have mischaracterized his largely
constructive efforts as pointing fingers at
those in the trenches.
Perhaps, you should be more responsible
in your criticism of Spencer Kim's efforts
to save lives.
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Spencer Kim: Irrelevant
Spencer Kim's article is partly right, partly unrealistic, partly wrong and totally irrelevant.
He is correct that the Search & Rescue effort in southwest Oregon was disorganized. However, the disorganization had no bearing on the outcome of the search for James and Kati Kim. Mr. Kim died within three days of the start of a search in an area the size of Connecticut, but with one-seventh its population. Within a day and a half, it was narrowed down to an area the size of Delaware, but with one-tenth its population.
Even if the SAR effort had operated like a proverbial Swiss watch, finding his son before he died would have been at least as much a matter of luck as anything else. The most glaring error committed by search managers had nothing to do with command-and-control issues. It was the failure to follow up on a solid tip, a matter of simple negligence.
Spencer Kim's plea to close remote logging roads and patrol them to be sure they are closed is unrealistic. There are 5,000 miles of logging roads in southwest Oregon. There aren't enough rangers to keep them closed, or to monitor gates, especially when many local residents want the gates to stay open. Welcome to the wilderness, Spencer.
Spencer Kim's blaming of credit card privacy rules for delaying the search was flatly incorrect. His daughter, Eva, had provided police with James Kim's bank records and travel information. A Portland hotel's refusal to release the Kims' records was irrelevant, given the police already had the information they needed.
Finally, Spencer Kim's article ignored the negligence displayed by his son and daughter in law, instead pointing the finger elsewhere
James and Kati Kim did not, as many media reports said, simply take a wrong turn and wind up in the wilderness on the night of Nov. 25-26. They ignored half a dozen warnings against winter travel in the Rogue Wilderness: Two on an Oregon highway map and four on road signs along their route. At a critical juncture on a snowy night, they elected to take an unknown road farther into the wilderness. The following morning they elected to stay in that wilderness rather than drive back out.
The Kims did not make those misjudgments in isolation. They must be viewed within a broader context of a late departure from the Portland area; foul weather – actual and forecast -- both that day, that night and indeed throughout their trip to and from Seattle; their prior residence in Oregon; the presence of two very young children in their car; plentiful alternatives for their route and accommodations; and the Kims' lack of emergency equipment and seasonal clothing.
We are skeptical of Mrs. Kim’s account of the events of Nov. 25-26. It is highly likely that the Kims stopped at a tourist information center in Wilsonville, just south of Portland, shortly after noon, and took about five hours to make what is normally a one-hour trip to Halsey, where they refilled their fuel tank. We think the Kims activities during this time gap might go far to explain their haste later that day. We are not convinced that the Kims missed an exit from Interstate 5 to Oregon Hwy. 42, as Mrs. Kim told investigators. More likely, in our view, is that they had decided earlier in the day to use the wilderness route.
Mrs. Kim’s account of weather conditions on the night of Nov. 25 does not ring true. If it were dry until just before they were stopped by snow, as she claimed, they could have easily returned to I-5 rather than proceed down the logging road. We think it’s more likely that it had been snowing heavily as they proceeded up Bear Camp Road. We also suspect that the Kims took the logging road not just to seek a lower elevation, but because they believed they could reach Gold Beach.
When all of these factors are combined, we believe that the Kims were consumed by their haste and determination to reach Gold Beach, at the expense of the care and prudence to be expected from parents of two young children whose lives they endangered that night. The Kims bear the primary responsibility for the fate that befell James Kim and the near death of the other members of the family.