Did Mr.Kim die in the Oregan mountains because of Iraq?

[napi21]

Thom Hartmann just said this.

Incases like this, we usually call in the National Guard. Where was the NG? Iraq!

It's an interesting thing I never thought of, but sure could be true.

[Squatch]

1. No, you usually call civil first responders

like the local police, sheriff's office, volunteer SAR, etc.

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. Don't the national guard send helicopters to assist SAR? n/t

[flamin lib]

3. They had choppers. Weather kept them grounded a lot of the time.

In fact it was a chopper that found Mr. Kim.

[Squatch]

5. Who was flying it?

[lumberjack_jeff]

7. Someone hired by the family.

I think that ordinarily, national guard helicopters would have been searching.

[Squatch]

9. You're wrong on that count.

As a member of the National Guard, I can assure you that it would have been damn-near miraculous if the NG could provide any air support. Hell, while on duty on the border in Arizona, the ENTIRE Arizona border was allocated 4 hours of blade time, PER WEEK.

[lumberjack_jeff]

13. Wouldn't be the first time. Thanks.

I live near the coast, and I know that the coast guard does sar. I generalized too much.

[RamboLiberal]

16. Actually the chopper pilot that found them wasn't a family hire

He was just a local chopper pilot who knew the history of that area and how people make that bad turn and decided to search on his own. He was a private owner who had a small helicopter he used to travel between Burger King restaurants he owns.

[Squatch]

4. Not very often

More often than not, air support is provided by local police or the Civil Air Patrol. Relying on the NG for air support is monumentaly dumb, since at any given time, their birds will not be able to fly due to exhausted "blade time" allocations, maintenance, etc.

[jbonkowski]

6. It's possible there was a helicopter shortage

But I think he was dead even before most of the search was underway.

I think no one noticed they were missing for a week, and he left the car after 7 days, so more helicopters wouldn't have helped save him.

jim

[lumberjack_jeff]

11. There were postings here about it on Friday Dec 1st

They got stuck on Sunday the 26th, he left the car Saturday the 2nd.

[mcking]

8. Mr. Kim died for a lot of reasons

In my humble opinion, the most pertinent was his reliance on web-based road maps, which can be terribly misleading, as I have discovered to my cost.

I've never heard of the National Guard being called out to search for missing people. They do, however, form an important part of the Pacific Northwest's forest fire-fighting infrastructure. I have been worried about THAT ever since they started sending them to Iraq.

[RamboLiberal]

15. I understood they were looking at a hard copy map

Last night Anderson Cooper had a 1 hour special on CNN where they retraced the route with camera crew and the guy who had the lodge in the area. The place where the Kims took the side road was really deceptive. At that point the wider road was the fork they took. The fork that would've taken them to the coast was marked by this itty bitty sign that said coast with an arrow. Try seeing that at night in bad weather.

The lodge owner showed where locals had painted on the 2 roads Coast and Dead End because so many make the mistake even in daylight. The paint was worn, and of course with the rain and snow falling impossible for the Kims to see at night.

I don't understand why the Kims didn't turn around. Perhaps they assumed the road they got on since it was now going downhill would link up with a road and get them off the mountain.

They made a lot of tragic errors. Driving in mountains at night, not turning around when they missed their original turnoff. Not turning around when the road they took was obviously not a main highway. Being low on fuel. Unfortunately these errors cost James Kim his life. I'm not going to dump on him or them.

Here's story from CNN.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/12/11/griffin.oregon/index.html

We came to Oregon to retrace the path James Kim and his family took the day they got stranded in the Rogue River wilderness.

When we finally reached the spot where the Kims' car stopped after a long, winding journey, our traveling companions -- Sgt. Joel Heller, Josephine County Sheriff's office, and John James, owner of the Black Bar Lodge -- both had the same exact thought: Why did the Kims continue down such a desolate path when they so clearly did not know where they were going?

Though it is heart wrenching to question the decisions made by a man who died trying to save his family, it is hard not to wonder.

Three times, we passed large yellow signs warning that snow may completely block the roadway.

Eventually, we came to a fork in the road where a tiny sign -- almost invisible unless you actually stop the car and focus on it -- pointed the way to

[malaise]

18. I have been thinking long and hard about

this tragedy. You know I haven't seen anyone discuss the fact that their car was low on gas. Hubby calls me obsessed because as soon as my tank is half empty, I fill up. Too many people set off on trips without filling their tank.

[MissB]

21. They did turn around after getting lost and stuck in the snow.

And then (going by the map in the Sunday Oregonian's article), they apparently couldn't retrace their path. They did get below the snow level before stopping to rest around 2 am. When they woke up, the rain had turned to snow at their elevation and they were snowed in.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

10. Probably not. They mainly use civilian assets for that kind of search.

Hartmann is just wrong on this point. When somebody goes missing in a situation like that, the local sheriff (who would be designated the incident commander) decides what assets are needed, and might use civilian law enforcement helicopters if available, or contact Civil Air Patrol, which uses civilian volunteer pilots using fixed-wing aircraft. The problem with searching for someone in bad weather and rough terrain is you can't get aircraft up in bad weather, and searching on foot or even by snowmobile is very difficult in snow-covered hills.

I used to fly SAR missions for CAP, and from personal experience I can say that it is very, very hard to spot a person on foot from the air, and it's not even that easy to see a car if there are a lot of trees and the car is covered with snow. If you have FLIR-equipped aircraft it helps, but you still have to be able to fly, and it sounds like the weather was terrible for most of the time the family was stuck in their car.

So even if the NG were available (and I don't know whether they were or were not), the sheriff would have had to ask for them, and then they'd have the same operational problems any other SAR group would have had.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

12. I think the Coast Guard sometimes does things like that.

They've got helicopters patrolling the beach on a routine basis. I think sometimes they use search and rescue teams for mountain rescue. Don't know for sure though. Sometimes you'll see the Air Force rescue people. There was that AF helicopter that crashed trying to rescue Mt. Hood climbers a few years ago. Of course, that's a thing of the past.

You know, a week or so before the Kims went missing there were a couple of college students that went missing in the same general area. The next day they found skid marks and their truck in the Umpqua River, one missing student dead inside. They never found the other student, search was called off a few days later. I wonder why one got so much attention, and the other didn't.

[zbdent]

14. Bet the mother is right now going "D'oh!"

"All I had to do was dial a phone number and say 'Hello, al Qaeda?' and I would have been found, despite having a weak signal ..."

Note to self ... if ever crashed on a remote mountain area away from the highway, pull out cell phone and start to say something bad about * ...

[treestar]

17. A lot of money is being spent in Iraq that could be spent here

You could have a field day with that concept.

[OzarkDem]

19. Why did his father have to hire a helicopter for the search?

I didn't understand that part at all, that the local search and rescue crews apparently had no access to a helicopter to conduct a search.

[MissB]

22. I'm not sure he *had* to hire crews.

From the Sunday's Oregonian, the article did indicate that there was a rescue helicopter up there, along with a helicopter hired by the father of James Kim. The father is apparently a very wealthy L.A. area businessman. He was just doing what he could to help find his son- and in his case, he could afford to hire people to help the searchers.

[lumberjack_jeff]

23. From MSNBC

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16139804/

Some people at the vigil wanted to know why it took so long to find the Kim family and why the family's loved ones had to do so much of the work, Thomas reported. "How come the regular rescue didn't start earlier? (The Kim family) had to hire people on their own," said one person at the vigil.

<snip>

The Kim family had to use its resources, to rent helicopters for example, because the counties in southwest Oregon where the family was lost don't have many resources of their own. "These helicopters, the price I heard, they are $4,000 a piece, per hour. It's not something I can afford to do," said Josephine County Undersheriff Brian Anderson.

<snip>

"If I have someone who is injured, if we locate them, I do have resources through the National Guard (and) Coast Guard to get them; but just to run a search operation, I can't afford to do helicopter, especially if I don't know where they're at," Anderson said.

[OzarkDem]

24. Making government "smaller"

We all know that government needs to be as small as possible, right? Government is bad, individual intiative is good, right? :sarcasm:

[MissB]

20. He died because vandals cut the lock on the gate.

He died because, after getting lost in the snow, they continued to drive until they were out of the snow, stopping around 2 am at a spot below the snow level to rest. When they woke up, they were snowbound.

I wouldn't blame it on the lack of the National Guard.

You know, he died less than a mile away from a fully stocked lodge.

[OzarkDem]

25. I'm sure you'll feel the same way

if something happens to you or your family and you need assistance.

Right you are, we should also abolish governemnt subsidies for EMS services, too. Anyone who is dumb enough to get involved in a car accident should take the time to have arrangements in advance to have themselves transported to the hospital. All it takes is a little planning. I mean, why should the rest of us have to pay for their mistakes? I mean, why should we pay for emergency services, people should just quit driving or walking on public streets if they can't afford to hire their own ambulance. Right?

:sarcasm:

[MissB]

26. Uh, I wasn't blaming Kim.

I was pointing out a few really sad facts and coincidences surrounding that family's ordeal.

I think you may have read far more into my post than I ever, ever intended. :rofl: