Someone from Oregon "ME" - View on this James Kim event

by free2beme 38 Replies latest jw friends

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  james_woods

  Let me draw an analogy on this -- (and I hope nobody finds it to be a cruel one).

  The whole thing made me think back to the John F. Kennedy Jr. plane crash.

  Of course, the whole world grieves when something bad happens and the media gets involved and popularizes it into a national story. Most especially, when good people who have really done nothing wrong other than a case of bad judgement become the victims.

  There is a weird thing about airplane pilots - we will go to almost any length to try to prove to one another that something other than pilot error is to blame when one of our own is lost. Sort of the "maybe he was steering it away from that nursing home when it crashed". Or - "must have been something wrong with the plane". Or - "those air traffic controllers sent him the wrong way".

  I am not ashamed to tell you that I took a whole day off work to get myself back together after Kennedy crashed. And went through the above phase until I could not sustain the excuse-making any more.

  Then, I just faced the facts about it - the crash was inexperience and bad judgement - plain and simple. I think this Oregon tragedy is the same thing - and thanks be that the most of the family was rescued.

  Perhaps we should grieve for the loss in an intelligent way, without trying to make some kind a hero out of this poor guy after the fact. I somehow don't think he would want us to do that - probably he would be the first to say that he made a big mistake and paid the ultimate price for it.

  Sometimes things just bite, don't they?
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  daniel-p

  I don't think its appropriate to argue whether he is a "hero" or not. That statement was made by one of the search team members, and if that's the way he felt about it, then so be it. The basic fact is, shit happens. Poor judgment coupled with a lack of information sometimes kills people. The Oregonians could go to the Bay Area and find that "the Bay Area is not Oregon." You know how stupid that sounds? It's stupid. It's just about being out of your element, as a poster said before, and using poor judgment in the moment. Lots of us use poor judgment everyday of our lives. But only until some pokes an eye out, or freezes to death in the backcountry do we think how good judgment could save our life. Being in a warm comfotable car, the wiper blades on, the cd player playing some tunes, coming home from a nice thanksgiving dinner with your family, you're detached from the harsh, outside world just outside your car doors. I can see how it could easily happen... hopefully when I am in that situation I'll be aware enough to use good judgment.
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  Leolaia

  In another trip we were driving through Death Valley in rainy conditions and got caught in a flash flood. The road seemed fine at first, just a little rain, and so we decided to have it a go. But it was a long road, and halfway through the rain started to increase. So we had to make a decision: continue going straight which would lead us out of the valley (but by having us continue forward through the rising water) or backtrack our way back to the main road. At the time we made the decision, things wouldn't have seemed so bad to someone unaccustomed to driving on gravel roads in the rain. We decided to go back and I'm glad we did because it continud to get worse and worse, and about half way through on the way back the water was flooding so fast we could no longer see the road, but we eventually made it out. The next morning, the whole valley was a lake.

  James Kim obviously wasn't aware of the danger at first (he was following a map where the road was marked), and drove out in the mountain road at the wrong time of year. From what I recall of the news conference, they faced snowfall when they were on the road and the snow was increasing and increasing. As in my situation, they had to make a decision to continue going or back track, and they decided to back track. But they couldn't make their way out and the car got stuck. They said that Kim had to even have his door open while he drove backward because he had no visibility due to rapidly increasing snowfall. My point is that is it with experience with the local conditions (or pre-knowledge of what to expect) that one might understand that conditions that seem okay at the time being may turn bad on the turn of a dime. They probably thought it was a shortcut that would give them a scenic drive, with no notion that it was dangerous... They were just trying to get home from Thanksgiving.

  Being in a warm comfotable car, the wiper blades on, the cd player playing some tunes, coming home from a nice thanksgiving dinner with your family, you're detached from the harsh, outside world just outside your car doors.

  That is so true. I can't tell you how nice and comfy I felt in the vehicle out in the Australian Outback. Only when you opened the door would you realize the kind of harsh climate you're in. I certainly noticed this disconnect.
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  sammielee24

  I just finished reading more in the paper. It seems that had Mr Kim walked north for just over a mile, he would have reached a lodge, which while empty would have provided a rescue point and shelter. He went the other way. I don't believe the lodge was showing up on his map. Someone made a point on the radio today - a good point and it defines how I feel about it. He may not be a hero in commonly understood terms, but he made a heroic effort to save his family. sammieswife.
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  detective

  The news indicated it was snowing so heavily that Mr. Kim had to stick his head out of the window to see at times. Knowing that, it's easy to see how a person lost in a heavy snowfall in an unfamiliar area could make a terrible mistake like that. In a heavy rainfall recently, a man drove into a flooded roadway despite the fact that he knew the area and knew it always flooded in heavy rains. Even locals make mistakes. It's very sad.
• 

  free2beme

  Maybe since you are familiar with the area you can answer one thing that i wondered about. The question that I had was why he wouldn't walk back down the road or stay on the road but instead why he attempted to go cross-country. It seems obvious, that if one does choose to try to hike for help that you would follow the road in the hope of meeting up with some passing car (and certainly any rescuers).

  He stayed in the car 9 days. In that time, we got a lot of snow. It is very easy, when there is a lot of snow on these mountain roads, to not realize that as you hike along ... you have left the road entirely. He most likely had this happen. The road also has a lot of off roads that lead off it, as well.

  Just to be clear. If you are driving south on Interstate 5 to Grants Pass from Roseburg, which is the two major towns between his cut off, there is not a sign saying "Gold Beach" or "Oregon Coast" this direction or exit. In fact, you would have to take an exit, then work through small towns that in the winter time look abandoned, threw what is almost dirt road it is so unkept and threw a gate that is normally locked, covering a distance from I5 of nearly 20 miles. You would have to be a complete idiot to get that far and not think, "this is not the highway." Especially when there are signs saying "Oregon Coast, next exit 10 miles" at the exit in question. So to say this man took this road by mistake or because of some GPS guide mistake, is off the wall. I feel, as to many of the local people here, that he took it thinking it was some scenic adventure. Which is what happened last year too, when people took a motor home down it. They had a motorhome though, and were watching television and doing their thing and lived.

  As for the HERO debate. Locally, we are unsure why he would be called a HERO. Many people looking for him where feeling, "what was this guy thinking?" and not "What a hero." As the days went by, the searchers knew they were going to find him dead. You can only last so long in cold weather, and it was damn cold.

  Also, if it was a road you could accidentally find or stumble on too ... more people would being doing this, and this is extremely rare and often tragic.
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  Jourles

  This story reminds me of a time back when I was living in CO up in the mountains. One of our cell sites was located at the top of a ridge over Glenwood Springs. Next to our site was an AT&T long distance microwave station. They would use a helicopter to get in during the winter. I had four modes of transportation to use throughout the year - Bronco, snowmobile, atv, and an Argo. During the winter, I pretty much used the snowmobile for most of my sites.

  At this particular site, you have to park off one of the dirt roads and snowmobile the rest of the way. It's probably a 3 mile ride in to the site. YOU CANNOT DRIVE. Anyways, during one pretty frigid day, I was leaving the site and heading back to my truck when I come across two young guys, their dog, and a stuck Jeep Wrangler. They had been trying to dig their way out to get turned around. The snow depth varied all along the road, but I would say they got caught in about 2-3 feet of snow. There was no way they were getting out that day. I had to ride three up on my sled with their dog running along(and about to collapse from exhaustion) all the way back to my truck. If I hadn't been there at that particular time on that day, they would have been in a world of hurt. They didn't have any cold weather gear, no gloves, nada. Just their jeans and ski coats. If they would have walked out, I don't know what shape they would have been in. And there's no telling how long they would have stuck it out in their Jeep.

  I ended up driving them to one of their homes and told them good luck on getting their Jeep out. I gave them my number to let me know how they were going to get their Jeep back. They ended up having to hire a guy with a large snowcat to go up there and get their Jeep pulled around and then towed it down back to the main road.

  I'm not sure what the Kim's were driving, but it's quite possible that James Kim thought he could drive through anything. I have two other personal stories(where I got stuck on closed roads) that I'll have to relate some other time. I too thought I could drive my way through the snow to get to where I was going. Dumb dumb dumb.
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  free2beme

  Does this road look like a highway to anyone? Also, notice the roads leading off of it. If you were on this road, in the winter, you would not know if you were coming or going. The idea that you just head downhill, would also not work. As this road goes up and down, the whole way to the coast.
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  daniel-p

  Latest news says the road was actually opened illegaly by a vandal, allowing the family to drive on it. Doesn't really change anything, but interesting nonetheless.
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  free2beme

  They call them vandals. Around here we call them dear hunters. Deer season just closed a week ago. The hunters will get too, whatever they want to get too. A lot of locals have mentioned that the road is often opened in this situation. Also, many of us locally want better signs and better comments put on the maps. Things like "WARNING : POSSIBLE DEATH UPON ENTRANCE IN WINTER MONTHS" or bright lights flashing "WARNING DO NOT ENTER IN WINTER MONTHS." What is up with a padlock for locking it. I could fix that with a bolt cutter from my tool kit. How about some real security, something that can not be breached?