I was very unimpressed with the show. It was produced not by ABC but by an outfit called "Firecracker Films." The events had been the subject of an exhaustive report by the Oregon State Sheriffs Association, but I doubt the producers ever bothered to read it. I realize that no one ever has "total recall," but Kati Kim's story told on the 20/20 show was very different than what she told Tim Evinger, sheriff of Klamath County, Oregon, when he interviewed her six weeks after she and her kids were rescued.

In the 20/20 show, she was asleep for much of the time they drove into the backcountry. In 2007, she provided detailed recollections of what she saw on the drive. In the 20/20 show, they turned onto the logging road by mistake, because of bad signs and bad maps. In 2007, they took the logging road on purpose, hoping to find a lower-elevation route to Gold Beach.

I think what really happened is that they were in the grip of "Get There Itis." They really wanted to get to the Tu Tu Tun Lodge, which is the most luxurious digs on the Pacific northwest coast. They wanted to get there so bad that they ignored eight separate warnings, and common sense. And they were terribly unprepared, with two very young kids along.

A lot of us have made some bonehead moves, so it's not like James and Kati are horrible people. But to blame signs and maps and SAR, well that was just wrong. In the end, for all the media coverage, it's pretty outrageous that none of the reports said what needed to be said here. To that end, I wrote (and have just updated) a website about the events, Kim Tragedy. It tells the whole story, and has links to the relevant reports, along with a "Lessons to Learn" section that links to this website here, which I think is really outstanding. I've taken a lot of grief for saying what I think needs to be said, but the ultimate purpose is not just to assign responsibility but to point out the need for travelers to always use the most important survival tool we've got: The third digit of our I.Q.

Welcome to ETS, CWilson.

Thanks, Dagny.

I got here by a circuitous route. I hadn't spent any time on my Kim Tragedy site for several years, until about 10 days ago when someone told me about the forthcoming 20/20 show. I rolled my eyes and thought, "Here we go again." Went to the Oregonian's site and saw that Kati Kim was posting there, surrounded by what I can only describe as a portable pity party. (I'm really not that heartless, but the combination of crocodile tears and deflection has always excited my cynical gene.)

Anyway, I decided that I'd try to see if I could get any straight answers out of Kati (nope), and that I'd watch the show and update the site. There were lots of busted links, plus I was never really all that comfortable with having prominently speculated there about how she and James might have spent the afternoon of the day they were lost. I also wanted to sharpen the focus on "Lessons to Learn," and when I was doing that I actually followed one of the unexpired links over here.

I really think that, for all the details, the Kim story was remarkably simple: Casual city travelers get locked into tunnel vision, ignore elementary common sense." I think Kati has defensively stonewalled almost all of the questions about why they really wound up on the logging road, and the media has given her a "grieving widow wild card." All of which is understandable at one level, but when so many people followed this I do think a significant educational opportunity was lost.

That's really the rub. She irritates me with the evasions, but what really gets me is that here we had one time where the whole country is clued into a really clear and simple example of something that drives so many bad traveling decisions: overreliance on modern conveniences causing a lack of preparation, combined with "Get There Itis" (tunnel vision) causing people to lose all of their common sense. If she had just stood up to the plate and told it like it was from the start, I think she could've helped a lot of people. Instead, the media ignores the elephant in the room and the realities get batted around on fairly obscure websites. Darn.

Anyhow, this is a great site, and I know I will refer people here in the future.

20/20 certainly did a disservice to viewers by not devoting a portion of that broadcast to providing tips on assembling a vehicle survival kit.

Great that your website will steer some folks here.

Welcome to ETS and thanks for sharing CWilson. I too was disappointed in the manner 20/20 portrayed it and actually had more unanswered questions after watching the show. I live in Washington state and followed the story closely during the search and aftermath

I absolutely agree. The program also should have talked about how tunnel vision can override common sense. This is very insidious, and takes many forms, like speeding through rain and fog, and driving while tired. All of these things, and more, share a common root.

Good post dude.



This is a rare instance in which the term "tragedy" is used properly in our time. A tragedy is when the hero suffers horribly mainly because of his own faults and poor judgment, not because he was solely the innocent victim of chance. Good call.

Let me pop in here to make a comment or two.

A few days prior to the 20/20 show I got a call from an indignant Katie Kim who apparently didn't appreciate be cast as "unprepared" in my Lessons Learned post on my ETS Blog. It initially took me brief bit to put two and two together when she said "this is Katie Kim..." as I hadn't really given this incident a whole lot of thought for quite some time, other than to post the notice that started this thread. It was an "interesting" conversation that suggested to me that 3 years on she has rationalized herself into a new reality. <shrug> That's not uncommon among survivors, in my experience.

She has apparently just discovered my blog post and was upset that I had come to my conclusions without speaking with her and seemed not the bit put off when I explained that she made herself unavailable, so all I had to go on was published reports.

Bearing in mind that at that point I barely remembered what I had written, and since she was essentially asking me to revise my assessment, I told here I'd be happy to consider doing so, but would have to do an in-depth interview, which she declined, claiming she was prohibited from giving an interview by ABC. You can draw your own conclusions from that. As such I told her all I could do was watch the show and see if it changed my mind.

I can't say as my mind has changed. That she may have had more wilderness experience and skills than was originally known, doesn't change much, except to call into question the judgements made by the Kims even more. The lessons leaned are still valid and I don't think I have significantly mischaracterized her or the incident.

I have added a link to Charles' site, lot of good info there.

Doug - I re-read your column after CWilson posted here today and thought it a model of restraint and reason as it is not harsh but simply seeks to help others equip their vehicles so they could better cope if stranded for any reason, and enhance their odds of rescue.

The age-old silver lining of any tragedy: seeking its lessons to prevent recurrence.

There's been a lot of commentary on the Internet that Kati Kim would be justified at being indignant about, your column should be the least of her concerns. Fairly or not, she's now in the public eye and had better steel herself if she's going to be reading commentary on what was a highly publicized event. And thanks to her 20/20 appearance, still is.

If I were advising her on pr, I'd suggest she try to put the how and why they got stuck behind her and focus instead on the constructive lessons to be gleaned on how a vehicle and its occupants could be better equipped for being stranded for any reason.

In that way she could become a laudable spokesperson for preparedness. She's not a very effective speaker at this point but could be helped by media training.

I've been one of and maybe the most persistent of Kati's critics and interlocutors, but at this point I am inclined to move on. In the absence of real candor on her part, I feel as if I've reached the end of “What Can Be Known” road. My major questions are on my site for all to see.

If Kati has a change of heart and wants to be interviewed for real, fine, but I'm not holding my breath. Unless someone is planning to milk this into some sort of reality show or video game, based on false premises, I think we've seen the end of the publicity train. It's tragic and horrible that he died. Truly, I wish that on no one. It's unfortunate that it couldn't have been turned into a much more useful lesson.