I'm sure there's many stories like this one but I was listening to one of my podcasts just yesterday and they mentioned him missing in Oregon and to be on the lookout if in the area.
Easy to second guess what he should have done. Still a bummer.
The body of missing CNET senior editor, James Kim, was found Wednesday approximately half a mile from the Rogue River in Oregon, US.
Kim and his family were on their way home from a Thanksgiving get together when their car became stuck in the snow on a desolate side road. The family ran the car's engine to keep warm and then resorted to burning the tires for heat when the gas ran out. After exhausting all means of providing warmth for his family, James set out for help carrying little more than the clothes on his back.
James is survived by his wife, Kati, and two children who were discovered alive on Monday, December 4th and were taken to the hospital for treatment.
I can understand why the searchers were so broken up. Just put yourself in his shoes...desperation kicks in, you go out with the hope of saving your family... it seemed like he did his best to leave a trail, although hypothermia was surely a factor in leaving clothing behind.
Poor guy gave it his all and died. It could have been anyone. I feel absolutely horrible about this--when the wife and kids were rescued, I was hoping that they would be able to quickly zero in on the father--seemed like a capable enough dude....even though a couple lighters will do little against this damp-ass freezing/not quite freezing weather we have been having in the NW.
I think it sucks, and I feel for him and his family.... but honestly I think he made some serious mistakes and didnt take the proper precautions.... when he took the route he took that was marked on his map, and realized that it wasnt plowed.... he should have turned around, not continued past the point of no return.
If I was stuck in a car with my family for 7 days and there was a chance of my children dying, I would have done the same though....
Sure he made some mistakes to end up in that situation, but it's what he did after things went bad that's really impressive. As a man, and as a family man, he did everything in his power to try and save them. I really found myself riveted to this story and though expected due to the length of time, it was disappointing today that he'd been found dead.
Oh, my God; I care so little, I almost passed out.
His wife said they ended up on that road after they took a wrong turn. They were apparently trying to followa manp they got online somewhere (presumably from the website of the hotel they were trying to find), and either it was wrong, or they misinterpreted it.
This was a pretty big storm. By the time they figured out that they were on the wrong road, they tried to turn around and couldn't. They got stuck.
Also, the fact that the wife and kids were found was a complete stroke of luck. Something to do with a ping from a cellphone that should not have been able to reach the tower from where they were. I saw an account of it from one of the cell engineers on our local TV news. They said it was a one in a million that the phone could reach the tower from where they were. In fact they were actually working on setting up a temporary cell network so the searchers could use them. At the time they got the ping, they almost dismissed it because it came from an area they did not expect them to be in (and thus were not searching). One of the helicopters that the family had hired to help search for him decided to make a pass through the area based on the engineeers estimate of where the ping came from, and found the car on the road. The wife heard the helicopter and started waving an umbrella she had wrapped in reflective tape.
They also just showed a map of the route he took shen he set out on foot from the car. Apparently he went 3 miles down the road they came up, and then went down a ravine apparently thinking it was a more direct path back to civilization. At some point he ended up turning back in the direction of where the car was, and ended up not too terribly far from where he started (they didn't say exactly but if the map was to scale, it was probably about a mile). I think they said he covered about 7 miles total.
One thing not being mentioned here is the fact that family and friends had started looking for the Kims immediately. If the local authorities had joined right away maybe there would have been a happier ending to this story.
Deward wrote:One thing not being mentioned here is the fact that family and friends had started looking for the Kims immediately. If the local authorities had joined right away maybe there would have been a happier ending to this story.
Maybe there's a policy on beginning massive searches for missing people. Anyone know? Can you typically contact the police with just the information that someone's been missing for a few days and get a full search going?
No contact for a day or two is hard to begin a search unless it's known for sure someone was in a situation where they might be in danger. The Kim family wasn't known to be camping or anything. They were staying at Hotels/Motels.
I don't know what the standard procedure is for something like this. I would think there's a different time frame from say, someone reporting a skier not returning to the bottom of the mountain than from someone missing during general road travel.
Deward wrote:One thing not being mentioned here is the fact that family and friends had started looking for the Kims immediately. If the local authorities had joined right away maybe there would have been a happier ending to this story.
It's because the county where they were lost has no search and rescue capability. Not a single helicopter. All they could do was provide basic command post/coordination center resources. Everyone else was a volunteer.
The helicopters involved were all privately rented by the family and had no real capability for search and rescue other than the eyeballs of the pilots and radios.
I feel absolutely horrible about this--when the wife and kids were rescued, I was hoping that they would be able to quickly zero in on the father--seemed like a capable enough dude....even though a couple lighters will do little against this damp-ass freezing/not quite freezing weather we have been having in the NW.
