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 ...
The election was very dirty and the undersheriff was a lot to blame for it being that way... the same is true for the county commissioner's race the incumbent sheriff pulled out of, leaving only one leftist candidate on the ballot...
I am very suspicious of the whole dynamic involved and the local nepotism of it.
A quick looksee, nope don't see a thing! And two people are dead. A family had to hire a private helicopter to find the car which was in plain view.
It's not just Oregon. It seems that those responsible for searching are totally unqualified.
Bureaucracies are populated with cronies, incompetent, and diversity hires that have NOTHING to do with competence.
In a near complete white-out situation.
That is one of the most confusing scenarios you will ever find yourself in.
ust two weeks later a car goes off the road on a major highway. Someone actually calls in the accident, nearly, but not quite, pinpointing the location of the auto.
Well he is dead...doesn't seem to do much good to condem a man that is already dead...
His kids will miss him on th 25th as well as every other day...meanwhile the others that made mistakes will be enjoying a nice holiday with their live family members...yeah they will feel guilty for a while but they will get over it and continue on with their lives.
Perfect. This quote is needed on another thread where several chair-bound, latte sipping critics are discussing the lost Mt. Hood climbers.
And as was discussed on another thread most online mapping searches send you on the wrong route when asking for directions, Grants Pass to Gold Beach. I did a direction search on MSN Maps, Mapquest, Yahoo Maps, and Google Earch; and with the exception of Yahoo they all gave directions over the unpassable route the Kim's attempted.
Wonder if the tech savy Mr Kim used an internet mapping service?
Agree completely. Notice how Monday Morning QB's never have any incompletions or fumbles??
The number one mistake was by Mr Kim choosing the worst road in Oregon to take a shortcut.
Pray for W and Our Troops
My guess is that after accidentally getting onto the logging road, Mr. Kim quietly panicked, and really did not know what to do, other than simply plowing forward and trying to follow his map, which by this point was no longer valid to his situation, unbeknownst to him. It could happen to anyone, particularly those who are unfamiliar with local roads such as this logging road.
Maps like he was probably following are notoriously misleading too when it comes to secondary roads, as I've personally discovered during my own wilderness trips. So I can completely sympathize with the Kims' plight.
With that said, it looks to me that there was plenty of incompetence up and down the local authorities command chain, beginning with "car sick" Rubrecht and her indifferent football fan boss, who together bear a large portion of the blame for their poor rescue efforts.
You are right. I apologize. My concern was blaming and second guessing the authorities in a hysterical way.
Good point. Those things will often give you routes that look good on paper , but fall far short in practical application.
That pretty much says it all...it's a shame a man paid with his life for Rubrecht's total incompetence.
It may have been the Kim's fault for getting lost in the first place, but they did just about everything else right once they realized their circumstances. It appears that those that survived are very lucky that average citizens took an interest in their plight.
And I forgto to add that BLM's failure to secure the chain/gate across the logging road was simply criminal...
That's exactly right! I once used some Mapquest directions to find a government office in Baltimore, and they ultimately took me to a street and bridge that no longer existed.
Why would he go from Grants Pass to Gold Beach if he was coming from Portland? Run Portland to Gold Beach and that road doesn't come into play.
The way I heard it he missed the Roseburg cutoff and then found that road on a map and mistakenly thought it was passable. Should have stopped at a gas station and asked, they would have warned him about that nightmare road.
Pray for W and Our Troops
The roads were closed, they had steel gates across them. It was reported that unknown persons had cut the chains and locks and had opened the gates. However, no one checked to see that the gates remained closed.
Exactly. From the story:
Rubrecht, a 32-year-old former police dispatcher, was named Josephine County's search coordinator in 2001 with no prior experience in the field.
That sounds like the Wayne County, Michigan (Detroit area) "emergency response" system. Tens of millions of dollars of federal post-911 gear is sitting in trailers hidden behind county buildings at Metro Airport. Not one radio, gas mask, or IR sensor has made it into the hands of first responders after five years.
However, it was learned that all of the $15K generator sets were installed at the homes of (RAT) county commisioners. But that was treated as "business as usual" because the commisioners said they deserverd the generator sets because they were so important that they should not have to worry about power being interrupted to their homes.
The gate was open, BLM officials would later acknowledge, because the bureau had failed to follow normal procedure and close it for the winter.
I too had initially heard that someone had cut the chain and left the gate open, but apparently BLM finally fessed up here to not doing its job. Typical government apathy...
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