Letters to the Editor
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Required reading
Nobody should ever venture into wilderness in winter without first reading Jack London's "To Build a Fire." He said it all about human hubris in the face of nature. The Kims, like the man in the story, were behind the curve every step of the way.
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Enough of the "F" word
People are obsessed with Fault. Pin it on someone, and you can wash your hands of the situation, and walk away from dealing with any underlying problems.
I understand Spencer Kim's drive to bring some meaning to his son's death by at least trying to spot & remedy any underlying problems. The people who sit smugly at their keyboards and armchair quarterback this tragedy in hindsight need to find something constructive to do with their lives. May I suggest a long walk in the woods?
The Kim story is a tragedy. Everyone tried to do the best they could. In hindsight it's easy to see every misstep. All anyone can constructively do is try to learn from another's misfortune. The lesson I took away was that the veneer of civilisation (roads, houses, cellphone towers) is far thinner than we all think, and it's all too easy to naively wander off the grid. We haven't come anywhere near as far in 200 years as we tell ourselves. And judging by the compassionate comments to this article, I don't bleieve we've come very far in the last 2000 years.
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"Blame the rescuers?" I don't think so.
My husband belongs to the local cave rescue group and I can't begin to count the number of weekends (usually holiday weekends) that have been disrupted by a rescue call-out.
95% of the time, it's a group of teenagers or beer-drinking good ole boys who decided to check out a cave with multiple pits, drops, and twisty passages armed only with flashlights and wearing street clothes and tennis shoes.
Some rescues last for days if the team has to rig ropes to carry out injured people or do a body recovery.
Nobody compensates the volunteer rescuers, there are few thanks from the families afterwards - or even from the idiots who got pulled out. The final insult is that when the volunteers take time off from work, they either lose pay or have to use precious vacation time.
All because other people were stupid and didn't take proper care to keep themselves safe.
James Kim & his wife made some bad decisions. We all do. In their case, the price was a fatality, and that's a terrible price to pay for him and his family.
But for Kim's father to denounce and criticize the people who gave of their own time and risked their own safety is truly insulting. Especially to those of us who've had their loved ones placed in danger because of other peoples' carelessness.
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Ultimately, the Kims are to blame
The Kims made some unfortunate errors in judgement and paid a deadly price for them. Calling James Kim an idiot is uncalled for, but I don't think it is unfair for people to point out the choice that they made that clearly show a lack of common sense. Moving rocks out of the road? Disregarding signs? I'm no wilderness expert, but I can't imagine a rational person doing all of this. As someone else said, maybe they were extremely tired.
People make mistakes that cost them their lives every day, but not every family gets the opportunity to pontificate about it in a major U.S. newspaper. I think it was rather unfortunate for the Post to print Spencer Kim's piece given how fresh his grief is.
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Spencer Kim did express eternal gratitude for search teams & volunteers
"We are eternally grateful for the heroic efforts of the search-and-rescue teams and volunteers who risked their lives to save James and his family."
SPENCER H. KIM.
It has been suggested that Spencer Kim did not appreciate the efforts of searchers. I re-read his article and found his specific words above. He did clearly acknoweldge that other people risked their lives for his son and James' family and he expressed his gratitude. Spencer Kim also spoke of, " conscience-driven cellphone company engineers who saw fit to volunteer their time"
It is true that James Kim made some fatal mistakes. It is equally true that there are some system inefficiences which delayed or hampered search efforts for James Kim. Spencer Kim mentioned that due to media helicopters, search operations were cancelled one whole afternoon and that credit card privacy protection should be waived in cases of emergency. There were various government agencies involved and not till later was a command post set up. I thought these were legitimate points to raise.
I did not find Spencer Kim's tone to be 'blasting'. I've heard blasting. That tone was not blasting, to me.
I learned a lot from Salon readers' letters about do's and dont's of wilderness driving. I am too chicken and too un-savvy to venture into snowy wilderness alone in any case ( I have chains, but don't know how to put them on ) but I have saved these tips to pass on to friends or family.
As a single female I have driven alone at night on Oregon roads going from Eugene over to the coast, but it was never in winter. I was lucky never to encounter a problem. Luckily I was driving a reliable new car and luckily never had a flat tire at night far from safety and help. I understand the urge to push on to a destination at night. Having lived mostly in the tropics, I realize now it would be foolish to attempt the same trip in snow conditions.
I appreciated the points by LUCKYCAT, a Salon reader, who said that in the snow everything is white and regular markers are invisible. This sounds obvious, but its profundity may only be realized when lost in snow conditions. I now live in Canada. It snowed night before last in my small town and the snow has remained on the ground. It is so true. Snow obliterates boundaries. Curbs, roads, sidewalks disappear, but where I am, I can see houses and telephone poles. In the wilderness the normal markers of telephone poles and houses would be absent. It is easy to walk in a circle.
I travel with extra food because of earthquake preparedness.
Kati and the two little girls were discovered by private helicopters. If not for such resources and assets, what would have happened to them? I shudder to think. Thanks to God for their safe recovery.
Calling James Kim an idiot is harsh and cruel.
Thanks to Salon for this piece and for raising awareness.