The Lessons In My Son's Death (op-ed by Spencer Kim
tur...@mailinator.com
The Lessons In My Son's Death
By Spencer H. Kim
Saturday, January 6, 2007; A17
Early last month my son, James Kim, died of hypothermia in a snowy
wilderness in Oregon after setting out on foot to seek help for his
family, who were stranded in a car.
My son's death was a tragedy that could have been prevented. A wrong
turn on a poorly marked wilderness road need not have resulted in the
ordeal of James's wife and two daughters, nor his death while trying
desperately to find help. I am sharing some of the hard-learned lessons
that I took away from my family's trauma in the hope of making it less
likely that others will suffer the same fate.
First, it is crucial that measures be adopted to ensure against
mistaken access to potentially hazardous logging and private roads.
Those responsible for the maintenance of such roads must be required to
post clear signs warning against access. Governments should allocate
sufficient resources to regularly monitor roadblocks designed to
prevent access, and it should be a federal crime to tamper with such
signs and barriers.
Such measures might not have stopped James and his family from being
misled by a map that depicted the road they chose through the Coast
Range as a major thoroughfare, but they would have prevented the
ill-fated turn that led them into a maze of logging roads and across
treacherous terrain that travelers never should have had access to in
the first place.
Locals say mistaken access to the road in question is common, although
a gate is at the entrance to the logging roads specifically to prevent
unsuspecting travelers from wandering onto them. The appropriate
federal agencies failed to perform their duty and lock the gate for the
winter. James was not the first victim of an accidental detour in the
same area, but with a few changes, he could be the last.
Second, Congress should change the law so that most recent credit card
and phone-use records can be immediately released to the next of kin in
the event of an emergency. Privacy laws are important to safeguard
personal information, but there needs to be provision for exceptional
access to information by relatives when it is critical to a family
member's survival.
Four days passed before we even knew James and his family were missing.
But because my family was unable to confirm credit card and phone-use
information until days after their absence was discovered, the start of
the search was needlessly delayed. Precious time and a precious life
were lost. Privacy concerns kept both the hotel where James and his
family last stayed and the restaurant where they last dined from
sharing credit card records, thus denying us for days important clues
that would have helped narrow the initial search area.
Similarly frustrating was that we did not know about a transmission
into James's cellphone on the night his family became stranded until
the evening of Dec. 1 -- three full days after the San Francisco Police
Department was notified that James and his family were missing.
Remarkably, this information was confirmed not by authorities but by
conscience-driven cellphone company engineers who saw fit to volunteer
their time. This information proved critical to significantly reducing
the search area, and it allowed for the discovery and safe rescue of
James's wife, Kati, and my granddaughters, Penelope and Sabine, less
than two days later.
Had this information been confirmed sooner, rescue teams could have
immediately focused the search operation, and James probably would have
been rescued with his family and spared his doomed 16-mile quest to
save them. What a difference a day would have made!
Third, steps should be taken to ensure that authorities are adequately
trained for search-and-rescue operations, have a clear sense of their
available resources and fully understand the procedures necessary to
conduct an effective, well-coordinated search-and-rescue operation.
We are eternally grateful for the heroic efforts of the
search-and-rescue teams and volunteers who risked their lives to save
James and his family. But the search was plagued by confusion,
communication breakdowns and failures of leadership until the Oregon
State Police set up a command post. The media widely reported that
leads that could have led to more timely discovery of the car were not
pursued. Misinformation was rampant, diverting scarce resources. Air
National Guard helicopters with sensitive heat-detecting technology
languished on the tarmac for days, even after the cellphone-use
information provided a better picture of where James and his family
probably were.
Meanwhile, James hiked through the forest for two long, cold days and
nights, and Kati and her children waited through two more days of
freezing temperatures until private helicopters discovered and rescued
them.
Finally, the Federal Aviation Administration classification code for
Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFR) to limit media presence during a
life-or-death search-and-rescue operation should be more strictly
enforced. A TFR is used to restrict aircraft operations within
designated areas to separate "non-participating" aircraft from those
engaged in official activities, including search-and-rescue operations.
Unfortunately for James, aviation authorities acquiesced to media
requests to relax restrictions and allowed low-altitude media flights
in the area while the aerial search was still underway. This untimely
and irrational decision caused many rescue helicopters to abandon their
operations for one full afternoon due to dangerous conditions created
by media airplanes. It took personal pleas to Washington to get
restrictions reinstated. The search, not media interest, should be the
top priority.
With his last heroic determination to rescue his family, James proved
himself to be a man of action. My son deserves a legacy worthy of that
man. As a tribute to him, I am determined to follow his lead and do all
I can to prevent another senseless tragedy.