Who's To Blame For The Death Of James Kim

Whoa, whoa, whoa there, Spencer Kim. We just caught up with Salon's reaction to James Kim's father's finger point-a-thon in the Washington Post. James Kim is, of course, the San Francisco technology journalist who died in the mountains of Oregon after getting stranded there with his family, and Spencer Kim's article blames the credit card and cell phone companies who put a lot of red tape in front of the transaction and call records of the lost family and he blames the search and rescue people who tried and failed to find his son in time to save him. It's tragic. James Kim's trek through the mountainous terrain in an attempt to save his family after they had been stranded for over a week was heroic. But blame put on Oregon forestry and search and rescue is misplaced.

It is a stretch -- we know you want to blame someone concrete and you want to put energy towards an enemy you can actually defeat -- but maybe the high-tech, highly-scheduled lifestyle that says "we have 4.7 days vacay and dammit we're going to get our .7 days in on the coast come hell or high water" is more to blame for the death of James Kim than the search and rescue that, by all accounts, moved heaven and earth to find him. This isn't particularly easy either, but you also have to look at the decision makers who placed the Kims in harm's way in the first place. The area around San Francisco is relatively similar to the mountainous land in southern Oregon where the Kims got lost. It's not exactly Tibet, but the natural dangers of both places are fairly evident. There can be harsh weather conditions, there can be steep terrain, there can be large swaths of land that are unpopulated. To the experienced mountain driver the stretch of I-5 between Portland and San Francisco is pretty easy, but some of the passes require chains in the winter despite the fact that it's the largest and safest road that exists down there. When you turn off of I-5 in the mountains, at night, in the rain, and then make another turn onto an even smaller road and then eventually find yourself on a road where if another car came from the opposite direction there would not be room for the two of you to pass each other, but it doesn't come up because there are no cars coming from the other direction and yet you drive 21 miles up that road...something's got to click there, and it shouldn't matter if you're the guy from Man vs Wild or the most urban dweller of the concrete jungle who ever lived. Sorry, but this is true: Ultimately the person to blame for the death of James Kim is James Kim. Saddling tiny Oregon counties with a bunch of superfluous legislation isn't going to change that.

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By Dan in Miscellaneous on January 12, 2007 12:48 PM

Comments [rss]

GrantPassMan

This discussion started out about who was ultimately to blame and I have to agree with the author that Mr. Kim himself bears the brunt of that responsibility. Living in the aria where he was lost I followed the story closely and feel for him and his family who lost him but there has been a lot of talk about closing access to a lot of the winter lands that people who live here use as a result of this. That really bothers me. Why should so many people who use these arias for winter activities suffer for the poor decisions of others? Kim from all accounts I have seen is a smart man and I believe he knew he was taking a chance. There were at least 3 large yellow signs he had to pass that warned of road closures in the winter due to snow drifts. How far should we have to go to protect someone from themselves?

Do we close the bars so someone won’t get drunk and go driving? Or shut down the golden gate bridge or stop allowing people to walk on it because someone might think it’s good ideas do take a dive off it? People take chances and the out come is not always good, as in this case but over reacting and making everyone else suffer would be wrong.

I have heard that we could put up better signs and sure I’m all for it just as long as people realize it won’t stop it from happening again because it was not the lack of signs that is to blame and there will always be someone who ignores them regardless of what they say.

Jason357

I'm glad someone is finally speaking against this lunacy coming from the Kim family and supporters about idiot-proofing one of the few remaining wild areas of the nation. The premise that enough government intervention can solve all problems has been proven wrong, over and over.

It's quite strange that the Kims left Portland at 9:00AM and were still driving around, at least two hours from their destination, at 10:00PM, with two small children in the car.

What's more strange is driving down a single lane road in bad weather, and being surprised that it snows in the mountians at 11:00PM in late November, after passing several signs warning about possible blocked roads. There were also reports that the Kims intentionally drove down the logging road to get below the snowline, and they knew damn well it wawsn't a main road.

I have to ask, was there any investigation into possible drug or alcohol use during the travels, anything that might have impaired their judgement to that degree. My first thought is smoking pot.

Since Mr. Kim seems intent on pushing government solutions for a problem created by the poor decisions of his son, the public has the right to respond and preserve what little freedom of choice that remains in this nation. The only real solution that could have prevented Kim's death was manned gated at each end of Bear Camp Road, and regular patrols of the road. In other words, urbanize the rural areas because a tiny minority of visitors make bad decisions.

truthon

"Damn I would not touch this discussion with a ten foot pole."

Why are you such a politically correct Seattle pussy? These people are just saying the truth.

Dave Richardsen

I agreed with Courtney on some of her opinion. What actually, finally killed James? It wasn't the BLM road. In fact the road could have saved him in two different ways if he had let it.

James told his wife he was going to take a hike on the BLM raod and he'd return at 1:30pm that afternoon. He hiked about eleven miles down the road and then it was decision time (I have no promlem second guessing him here). #1: To return to the car. or #2 To continue hiking the remaining ten miles of road out to Bear Camp Road.

Both choices would have kept him alive and rescued. However he chose a third, dangerous plan - To leave the BLM road and hike off-trail into Big Windy Creek drainage with only a state of Oregon highways map. He immediately started getting soaking wet in the dense foilage, and wetter still at the creek. And it was probably over fairly quickly.

If something must be blamed, blame Big Windy Creek drainage. And what can we do? Fence it off?

Courtney

Sorry Jeremy, but if there's a road to walk back down, most people would walk back down the road. That's the trick, wilderness situations aren't black and white, and granted what should be the case 95% of the time just wasn't the case here. You stay put when you don't know where you are, nor how to get back to where you were. You stay put when you are LOST. Technically, they were not lost, but they were effectively stranded. They knew what road they were on and how they got there. It's the one decision they made (why would you think that was his decision alone?) that I actually understand: walk back down the road to the main highway and get help.

Jeremy M. Barker

I didn't argue that I wouldn't contemplate--and possibly do--the same thing myself, and second-guessing his decision is admittedly a luxury he didn't feel he had. Got it. Thank you. It makes a good story--man against the elements, do you trust in yourself and your own pluck to make it through? Could you have waited there while your children freeze and starve until one dies? Ooh! It's a great story, I agree. Maybe there'll be a movie of the week with Keifer Sutherland: he plays the hard-ass guy in a pinch pretty well. Unfortunately, the Kims' story isn't the only story of people lost in the wilderness this winter: there was that guy up in the Olympics not two weeks later lost and no one even knew till they found him. But what do these stories have in common? The people who stayed by the car lived, and the guy who didn't died.

The difference between all of us calling something bravery and stupidity is often based on whether the action had a positive or negative outcome. If he'd stayed at the car his wife wouldn't be a widow and his children wouldn't be half-orphans. Don't get caught up in his story: If you were to give advice to your own children should they be caught in the same exact situation, what would you tell them to do: What James did, or what his wife did?

Kasa

Also to Jeremy, don't go calling out James' decision as stupid and then championing his wife. Um, I'm sure that was a decision that both of them made to send James out down that mountain. Furthermore, if you read the Slate story, you'll note that a family had been stuck in roughly the same place a few years ago and were saved BECAUSE two members walked off and found help.

Really, this stick together thing is advocated because the risk is less, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily a terrible decision. I mean shit, if he'd gone in the other direction he would have hit shelter, didn't I read that? And I agree with Courtney wholeheartedly. Though I wouldn't have driven up that damn road in the first place.

Jake of 8bitjoystick.com

Damn I would not touch this discussion with a ten foot pole.

Courtney

Both my husband and I agree that while we'd never make the series of decisions that they did to get stuck 21 miles up a snowy 1-lane mountain road in the middle of winter--if we were there, OF COURSE one of us would think to walk back out the damn road THAT WE JUST DROVE UP. That's what stymies me about this. Two people with a lot of outdoors/wilderness/backcountry knowledge can both admit (despite telling everyone in other situations to "Stay together, always") that one of us would have seen fit to walk back down a freaking road. How he got off the road, we'll never know. Our guess is the snowfall was heavy enough, that he ended up turning into some form of drainage/ditch that he thought was the road, and it was all lost from there. But seriously, a road, which has had all the trees cleared off it? It isn't like they were lost on a trail that they were hiking in the middle of the woods. Hell yeah, one of us would have gone back down the road. I really can't believe no-one else can admit that.

Regardless, Spencer Kim is wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. He clearly knows even less about the complexity and sheer size of backcountry oregon roads. Funding for maintaining those areas is already well beyond strained. And legislation will never remove the inherent risks of being alive--those who seek to do so will only ruin things for everyone else.

Dan

You know, that's the one decision I have a very hard time second guessing. He hung in there for a week.

Jeremy M. Barker

And, at the risk of being offensive to the memory of the deceased, I'm afraid I have to point out that setting out on his own was in no way a recommendable move. It's a terrible situation, and no doubt the feeling that you needed to take action to save your family would be immense on anyone, but it's worth pointing out that his wife and children were saved by doing exactly the opposite of what he did: Staying put, bundling down, not heading off into the wild when they were already lost, and wisely making use of every resource available to them. I know we're all supposed to feel bad for James Kim, but honestly, his wife's painful loss notwithstanding, I have to say to her, "Good for you! You hung in there, stuck it out, and got yourself and your children out!" I think maybe people should stop throwing blame around for his tragic death and start using his wife's courageous survival story as an object lesson in what you should do in an awful situation.