Posted on 12/17/2006 6:23:57 AM PST by surfer
Searchers failed to exploit vital clues in the hunt for the family of James Kim, including several crucial pieces of evidence that surfaced in the final hours of his life, when he was freezing, alone and lost in the woods.
An examination by The Oregonian found a search plagued by confusion, gaps in communication, and failures of leadership in Josephine County, where the Kim family was found.
Lt. Brian Powers, the Oregon State Police commander in the region, said the lack of a central command prompted him to take control Sunday, Dec. 3, the day before Kati Kim and her two daughters were found alive. At the time, the search was sprawling over four counties, each with legal authority to conduct its own operations.
"I knew we had information gaps that weren't being filled, and I just felt like the Oregon State Police could provide something to that effort to make sure that family gets found," Powers said. "If that effort meant knocking down some jurisdictional lines . . . I guess that is what it was."
In the end, the family was found by a volunteer pilot, one of several key breakthroughs achieved by people not connected to the official search. The confirmation that the family was south of Roseburg came from a citizen tipster; and the cell phone evidence narrowing the search was provided by amateur detectives at an Oregon wireless carrier.
Many of the key missteps came in Josephine County. The search-and-rescue coordinator now acknowledges she was overwhelmed by the demands of the search. She failed to call for help from the National Guard, which meant that heat-detecting helicopters stayed on the ground in the crucial two nights James Kim slept in the forest. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at oregonlive.com ...
Wasted billions of tax payer dollars and nothing has changed.
The bureaucrats are good at demanind more more more money with nothing to show for the money already spent.
oops....demanding
Bray,
Map out the route to where they were going on any mapping service and see what it says...
words of wisdom...right on!
He missed the Hwy 42 turn off to the coast just south of Roseburg. Hwy 42 would have been the preferable route from Roseburg.
After missing 42 he has two choices to get to the coast. One would be going back and taking hwy 42, the other would be taking 199 via Grants Pass.
When he finally did turn off I-5 he took the Merlin Exit only a few miles from the north exit (58) to Grants Pass.
When has a gas station ever told you of danger? Maybe back 30 years ago...not anymore...
Do you think any of the SAR related people should be called on their mistakes?
But she had five years to figure it out and having to attend mandatory training for those five years...and after five years on the job you still can't coordinate something...
Hello is the land of super-underachievers?
Well, they recently demanded more preparedness money simply because they are NYC, and deserve it. Even it they just squirrel it away, and slowly siphon it off, they treat it as their entitlement.
I'm sure the New Yawkers who aren't saved in the future will understand, and blame it on Bush.
And how much training is really necessary to make sure thermal seeking equipment doesn't sit on a tarmac for two nights waiting on instructions? Or to recognize that a coordinator's place isn't puking their way up a road; it's at a central staging point coordinating.
Is there really any doubt that you could pick a person at random, drop them into this situation, and have them perform better than Rubrecht?
As a wise man once told me...
Nobody could do a better job than Sara R.!!!
He would have also said...
I can't think of enough good things to say about her!
Out in the middle of nowhere, the guy running the gas station was Indian.
He was able to provide us with the correct route though.
An earlier post on FR, and a Fox News report a few days ago said that the locks had been cut on the gate....
Too funny! Actually down there the people know that road since people have died on it before. There is a station at the exit and they would have warned him as well as a number of truck stops.
He should have spent the night at the Indian Casino!
Pray for W and Our Troops
It wasn't cut...
GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — The gate that San Francisco online editor James Kim drove through before getting lost and dying of exposure deep in the Rogue River Canyon was never locked and was not broken open by vandals, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management said Wednesday.
The federal land agency with jurisdiction over the snowy road that Kim and his family drove down while trying to get to a luxury lodge at the mouth of the Rogue River had said last week that the road had been blocked by a locked metal gate since Nov. 1, but that someone broke the lock and left the gate open.
“The gate was not locked as we previously reported,” Jody Weil, director of public affairs for BLM’s Oregon office in Portland. “We can find no evidence it was ever locked nor was it vandalized.”
-=-=-
A BLM worker went to close the gate on or after Nov 1st. The worker thought someone might still be up the road so didn't lock it and nobody went back to lock it later.
I have heard reports from locals that have said that gate has never been locked.
The smashed lock on the ground that was reported on CNN and others appears to have been created when the truck removing the Kim's car from the road hit the gate and damaged the lock that was there.
Bray please explain who you know that someone in the gas station would have warned him?
Where is your information to back that up?
From the Kim's perspective at the time they had no reason to stop at a gas station or truck stop.
Sorry to be on your back again but I just can't understand how the assumptions you make translate into facts about something...
Go bust someone elses chops.
Pray for W and Our Troops
Bray you are so quick to deflect the issue away from LE, SAR, etc...I question your motives...I am not busting your chops. I am doing what happens on FR and as a result good information comes out of it.
Sorry you can't handled being questioned about your opinions.
You have tried to squarely place ALL of the blame on the Kim's...most of us are past that and want to improve the process for somebody in the future.
And remember James is dead he paid for his mistake.
Wow, an amazing article about the sad and inexcusable mistakes made by the people in charge of SAR. I hope this leads to changes in how they do things!
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