Spencer Kim: The Lessons In My Son's Death

Excerpts from Washington Post OpEd over problems with the rescue effort for the Kim family:

My son's death was a tragedy that could have been prevented. A wrong turn on a poorly marked wilderness road need not have resulted in the ordeal of James's wife and two daughters, nor his death while trying desperately to find help. I am sharing some of the hard-learned lessons that I took away from my family's trauma in the hope of making it less likely that others will suffer the same fate.

Mr. Kim notes that some private information should be immediately accessible to next of kin in case of emergency.  Lack of access to James Kim's cellphone and credit card information caused delays in narrowing the possible location of the Kim family to too late.  THe cellphone information that narrowed the search area came from volunteers within the local provider, not any official source.

Mr. Kim also seems to feel that local search and rescue authorities did not know what resources were available to them and talks about heat-seeking  helicopters that weren't used until too late.  (I railed about the use of snocats and SUVs when helicopters would have been much more efficient and was amazed when the aircraft were brought out immediately in the case of the Mt. Hood hikers.  Not that I would have wanted the horrible delay before effective help was used for the climbers, but since they weren't used for so long in the Kim case...) 

Excerpt:

Air National Guard helicopters with sensitive heat-detecting technology languished on the tarmac for days, even after the cellphone-use information provided a better picture of where James and his family probably were.

And

...steps should be taken to ensure that authorities are adequately trained for search-and-rescue operations, have a clear sense of their available resources and fully understand the procedures necessary to conduct an effective, well-coordinated search-and-rescue operation.
...
...the search was plagued by confusion, communication breakdowns and failures of leadership until the Oregon State Police set up a command post. The media widely reported that leads that could have led to more timely discovery of the car were not pursued. Misinformation was rampant, diverting scarce resources.

I don't know how many times I ranted about how the permanent search and rescue officials in the area seemed to be ill trained or possibly reluctant to do an actual search.  I guess I wasn't far off.

I read a lot of secondary reports on this oped and finally found one to tell me where it was, but the secondary reports did not show how pointed Mr. Kim was about the poorly conducted early search and rescue operation. That's why I made sure to include them here.

Mr. Kim also blames the media for making the airspace needed to search for his son too dangerous for the search aircraft to work in for at least one afternoon and probably rightly so, but also included in the blame were officials who allowed the media to hamper the aerial search effort. 

You can read the rest of Mr. Kim's words at link above.

I would also like to add that no person who listens to hate radio or TV like Fox should ever be put in charge of search and rescue.  I don't know if this happened in the Kim case, but Rush Limbaugh and his ilk regularly preach (and it is preaching) against rescuing people and make fun of anyone that might need a rescue effort.  Therefore, anyone who ascribes to that philosophy is, obviously, unfit for the important job of commanding a search and rescue effort right off the bat.

This is, of course, one of the many ways that Rush Limbaugh, hate radio in general and the whole "hate" culture (TV, News, magazines) is destroying the sensibility of our nation.

We can probably add James Kim to the victims of Katrina and our war on Iraq to their list those slaughtered for their hate.

It was good for Kati and the kids, and it will be good for the rest of us in the future that James had a father that is a strong minded person.

This article says that  investigations are taking place at the federal, state, and local levels.  Lets hope they are effective.

Usenet copy of Spencer Kim oped.

tags: james kim  search and rescue  oregon  california  spencer kim  

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