Background: Originally published December 13, 2006. This was a sad story of a young family becoming trapped in the snowbound wilderness. This was one of several columns that I wrote on the search effort.
I have been over the road one time between Galice and Gold Beach. I had just bought a "new" 1991 Ford Tempo back in the early 1990s and I wanted to take it for a nice summer drive. News-Review reporter John Sowell lived in the same Roseburg apartment complex as I, so we both jumped in my car and off we went to enjoy the scenic beauty along the coastal mountain range.
It was an all-day drive to Gold Beach and back. Unlike coastal highways 42, 38, and 199, the so-called Bear Camp road is nothing more than a BLM-type road with plenty of sharp switch-back curves. It's not meant as a quick route to the coast, but if one wants to see the confluence of the Rogue and Illinois Rivers near Agness, it's worth the drive.
James and Kati Kim reportedly missed the Highway 42 turn-off at Winston when driving on Interstate-5 south from Portland. Kati Kim told police they spotted the Galice cut-off road on a map, and decided to take that road to reach their lodge destination near Gold Beach. Apparently oblivious to the sub-freezing winter conditions at the time, the family took a wrong a turn on the Bear Creek road, and became stuck in the snow on a side BLM road about 15 miles from Bear Camp road. As the crow flies, they were about 20-25 miles west of I-5 at Merlin.
Unfortunately for the Kim family, the search was focused further north during the initial days of the investigation. That's because authorities assumed the family would have either used Highway 42 or 38 to reach their destination. The Kims had not notified family members of their change in travel plans.
James Kim Sr. launched a private search for his family and hired three Merlin-based Carson helicopters to begin looking. On Monday, December 4th, a helicopter operated by another private party spotted the mother and two children with their car. James Kim had left the family on foot to go for help.
People find themselves lost in the wilderness all the time. But the plight of this San Francisco family became a nationwide story. A family is lost in the wilderness. The mother and two children had survived days of freezing temperatures and are found alive. The father had left the family to go for help.
The resourceful parents had burned the tires of their car to keep warm and to send up a distress signal....even though no searchers were in the area when the fires were lit. The mother had breast-fed her two children, four and seven months, to stay alive. The dramatic story attracted journalists from Oregon and California.
Portland's KATU, KGW, KOIN, KPTV, and San Francisco's KTVU, KCBS, KGO, CNN, PSAT, and satellite trucks with a host of other acronyms that I didn't recognize....all camped out at the Merlin Industrial Park next to the airport. Fox News and Northwest Cable News broadcast live press conference updates in their entirety from the search and rescue headquarters. Oregon State Police sent their top public information officer from Salem to coordinate events.
Josephine County Undersheriff Brian Anderson barely received any sleep. He spent the entire day as the search spokesperson for the media. I don't know if he was able to grant all the media requests; he told me organizations across the country were requesting interviews at 11:00p.m., 4:00a.m., and so on.
I bumped into Brian Prawitz from KQEN radio in Roseburg. He was on the scene giving live radio reports not only for the Brooke Communications stations in Roseburg, but he also was the stringer for KGO in San Francisco and KPAM and KXL in Portland. At one point, KOBI-TV's team coverage utilized three reporters (myself, Christina Anderson, Wendy Enneking) covering different angles of the Kim family search. The story reached a climactic end when James Kim Jr. was found dead in the snow.
Reporters often feel like sheep at media events like these. Three Rivers Community Hospital in Grants Pass called a twelve noon press conference on December 5th. Reporters began to wonder why the press conference was called, when it became apparent hospital officials were not releasing any information during the press conference about the Kim family's status.
The answer became obvious when the Kim family was discharged out the back door of the hospital during the press conference. That'll teach the news media to trust hospital officials in the future! The only lesson learned from that incident is that reporters need to camp outside the door, instead of responding to the wishes of hospital personnel.
But the most important lesson of all from this tragic story is that travelers should not "MapQuest" their way to a destination. That's what the Kim family had reportedly done in this instance: Find the quickest route to get from point A to point B by going to www.mapquest.com on the internet. Two-dimensional maps on the internet don't show the altitude of a road, and they often don't make any distinction between primary roads like Highway 42, and secondary road like the one between Galice and Gold Beach.
I may be paranoid, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone isn't sued before this story is over.
No comments:
Post a Comment