Father seeks changes after failed search

GRANTS PASS, Ore. – Public access to federal lands and the way search and rescue operations are conducted in Oregon may never be the same because San Francisco online editor James Kim died after his family got lost in the wilds of the Rogue River Canyon and he died.

Hoping to prevent another death like that of his son’s, Southern California aerospace contractor Spencer Kim has called for tighter controls on remote logging roads on federal lands, a change in privacy laws that stymied access to credit card receipts and phone records that could have tracked his son’s movements sooner, and better coordination and training for search and rescue operations.

“My son’s death was a tragedy that could have been prevented,” Spencer Kim wrote in an opinion piece published Saturday in the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, investigations and reviews of the circumstances of James Kim’s death and the search for his family are being done by federal, state and county authorities.

Family spokesman Victor Lim did not immediately return telephone calls for comment. A man answering the telephone at CBOL Corp. in Woodland Hills, Calif., where Spencer Kim is chairman, refused to comment.

James and Kati Kim had gone to Seattle for Thanksgiving, and were on their way home to San Francisco when they missed their turn for the Oregon Coast off Interstate 5, decided to take a backcountry road through the Siskiyou National Forest and got lost in a snowstorm.

They were stranded more than a week with little food when James Kim set out on foot for help. He went down a creek where he was later found dead of hypothermia.

Two days after Kim set out on foot, a helicopter pilot not connected to the search spotted Kati Kim and her two daughters alive. Two days later, searchers found James Kim’s body.

Spencer Kim’s first concern was that the backcountry road where his son got lost was not clearly marked and that a gate blocking it was not closed.

“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,” he wrote.

At the request of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is looking at why a gate blocking the fork down which the Kims got lost wasn’t closed and locked, as it was supposed to be, and is reviewing its policies on access to roads on the public lands it manages.

Feinstein had called Kim to express her condolences, and afterward, Kim sent her a letter raising the concerns he expressed in the Post, said Feinstein spokesman Scott Gerber. Feinstein said she would look into them.

The Bureau of Land Management report is due Jan. 31, said spokeswoman Jody Weil.

The bureau initially said the gate – one of 165 in the agency’s Grants Pass Resource Area – had been locked, but broken open by a vandal.

After a closer look, the agency said the gate had been ordered locked, but a worker sent to do it left it open out of concern someone using the road might be locked in.

Four signs between Interstate 5 and the fork where the Kims turned down BLM road 34-8-36 warned that the backcountry route to the coast might be blocked by snowdrifts. A sign at the fork where they turned right points to the left route as the way to the coast.

At the request of the search and rescue team in Josephine County, the Oregon State Sheriff’s Association hopes to have a report by the end of this week on whether the Kims could have been found sooner if the search had been run better.

Spencer Kim wrote that the search was “plagued by confusion, communication breakdowns and failures of leadership until the Oregon State Police set up a command post,” and urged that steps be taken to assure authorities are properly trained for search and rescue operations.

While the volunteers who do the on-the-ground searching must be trained in basic skills, the coordinators employed by sheriff’s departments are not required to be trained in how to run a search.

Many involved in search and rescue feel that the people who get lost also bear responsibility.

One source the sheriff’s association has not been able to contact is Spencer Kim. Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger, who is heading the investigation, said Kim has not responded directly to calls to his attorney.

Once that report is in, Gov. Ted Kulongoski will appoint a task force to look at how the state can help counties do a better job, said Georges Kleinbaum, state search and rescue coordinator.

“Every mission has got something that can be improved upon,” Kleinbaum said. “No major operation doesn’t have errors.”