Posted on 01/06/2007 6:42:35 AM PST by aculeus
Apologies for neglecting to copy you on #39...
Sigh.
The WaPo must be excerpted.
I decided that most FR's would be attracted to the thread if I reached down into the guts of the article and included the comments on the media rather than leaving that point only to the few who would link to and read the entire article.
Judging by the popularity of the thread, I seem to be right.
As usual.
NO, HE DID NOT!!
He worked for CNet....get a clue....
Here's another item you might want to add: one of those new (portable) jump start units. I got one for Christmas, and it includes a worklight, DC converter, and air compressor. It will come in handy, as I'm the one driving around in an older vehicle.
Thanks...no need to apologize.
Does this idiot think that media aircraft were not also looking for the missing person? Any one of them would love to get the scoop of having found the guy.
And how does keeping private aircraft from the area "help" the government searchers? No government aircraft were stopped from doing their job by the presence of media helicopters. And besides, media camera equipment is superior to most equipment in military aircraft, with the exception of infrared gear.
How can more eyes in the sky possibly be a bad thing when looking for someone?
BS. I've flown in very high traffic situations. VERY high traffic situations.
The feds regularly whine about restricting private aircraft from "situations" where they want to preen.
A good example are the TFRs filed around wild fires in the West. This is supposedly to keep private aircraft away so that firefighting planes can fly. But they file the TFRs no matter whether there are any federal aircraft involved at all. I watched a fire 10 miles west of the airpark where I live for almost a week last summer. They kept a TFR filed for the area the whole time, and we saw zero firefighting aircraft.
This is a turf battle, no more.
More media helicopters with powerful telescopic cameras on their bellies would have HELPED the search, not hindered it. The feds just want the glory to themselves.
OK -- I stand corrected.
The primary lesson is to carry survival gear in your car when you are out driving in cold weather.
The second lesson is not to drive off the main roads in snow country.
The third lesson is not to leave your family in the car and go off on foot when you have no idea where you are going and are not properly equipped for the weather. If you have any bright objects, set them out where a plane might see them, and stay put.
It's unclear whether giving the media permission to enter the area contributed to the man's death or not. But that's probably a fourth lesson: Don't make exceptions for news planes unless they have experienced pilots who can be worked into the search patterns. In this case, there seems to have been interference with the rescue helicopters.
I don't actually blame the news media for this; I blame the officials who dropped the rules for them and/or failed to coordinate them with the rescue workers.
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.
You get that? A PRIVATE helicopter discovered them. Had a TFR been invoked as you people on this thread want, ALL private aircraft would have been kept out of the area.
After doing some research on this, it turns out that the search was very badly managed for many reasons. The government was embarrassed by it's performance, and is obviously seeking to pin blame somewhere. At some point government helicopters with thermal gear used the excuse of the lack of a TFR for their not flying. That's BS. They're merely accustomed to demanding restricted airspace for everything they do and don't like to operate without it. They're weenies.
I've got to agree 100% with this assessment.
Sorry, but it seems everybody screwed up except the guy who took a shortcut through a blizzard and broke a cardinal rule by walking out (in a circle) and leaving his family in what little shelter was available.
(Not to mention failing to figure out that he was NOT driving on a "major artery" and turning around while he still had fuel & a charge in his cell phone.)
The family survived because they stayed with the car and because a host of various people was out looking for them based on scant information - including two completely independent guys who worked out the cell signals on their own. I'm left to wonder how this story would be presented if the same results came about because the channel 11 news copter had seen them first (?)
Also, insisting on next-of-kin access to credit card data & phone records gets real close to opening a door for identity theft. (Which does NOT suggest that a missing persons report automatically gets sufficient official attention to get to those records in a timely manner.)
If there is a lesson here it is not that the state and the media are 'bad', it's that bad decisions often have worse consequences.
That's BS, and it contributed to this guy dying. The feds commonly insist on TFRs for everything they do. But there is no real safety reason for it. Tens of thousands of private aviators fly every day without positive control. That some weenie feds can't do it because some bureaucrat decreed the policy helped kill this guy.
The bottom line is that a PRIAVATE helicopter found the wife and kids. That WOULD NOT have happened had the feds locked up the airspace with their precious TFR.
It would be 5 dead people instead of one had it been up to the incompetent government.
Check out post 52. Had the feds gotten the Temporary Flight Restriction, then the private helicopter acting on their own on a hunch would not have found the family. The government screwed this one up big time, and they're looking to pin the blame somewhere.
"...many rescue helicopters [ ] abandon[ed] their operations for one full afternoon due to dangerous conditions created by media airplanes."
It was private aircraft that located the Kims.
Bingo. Saw the videos of James at CNet. Seemed to be a very likeable person, raised well. Unfortunately, panic must have set in, and he tried to do, what he thought was best,...go seek help. A tragedy all around.
In Sept. of 1999, I and my family had just finished two weeks of camping at Jesse Honeyman and decided to drive down the coast, instead of our ususal cut across Coos Bay to the interstate. When we reached the Rogue River, we cut left onto this very road. On the map it looks like about a hour/hour and a half drive to Grants Pass. It is not. If you can average 15 mph, you're doing good. We started on this road at about 1:00P and finally got to Grants Pass by 5:00/5:30P. Weather conditions were very pleasant, but this route is very dark and twisty, due to forest density. My alternator light kept coming on during this crossing, but I wasn't worried because we had all our camping equipment, and plenty of food. We saw 1 truck in the 4 hour crossing. I and my wife were nervous, on the road that never ends. When we finally arrived at Grants Pass, the sun setting, I vowed never again to take that road. It should be closed in the wintertime..accessable by official vehicles only.
Bull. Had a Temporary Flight Restriction been enacted to keep the media away, then Kim's wife and kids would be dead.
Here's the real story. A story of government incompetence of the highest order.
Excerpted rom the link:
There were high-tech means available that might have exploited the discovery that night, but no one called for their deployment.
The Oregon National Guard had a helicopter equipped with sensitive heat detectors that work best in the hours before dawn. It had spent Saturday searching roads in Curry County. Officials there said they were "going to pass the search to Josephine County."
The flight log says "there were no requests."
As the authorities waited and deliberated, a local helicopter pilot set out on his own. Like Powers, John Rachor grew ever more certain over the weekend where the Kim family was stranded.
At 10:30 a.m., he lifted off in his own four-seat helicopter, convinced he could find them. ...
Around noon, he said, he was flying low over the wrong turn the Kim family had taken. He spotted what appeared to be human footprints in the snow and car tire tracks, slightly obliterated by a recent snowfall....
Rachor was low on fuel and reluctantly decided to head for his home base at the Medford airport....
For the second straight night, the National Guard's heat-sensing helicopter sat on the tarmac in Salem, awaiting orders....
The next morning, Monday, Dec. 4, a snow cat began hacking its way down the logging road. It was about an hour away when Rachor returned to find the Kim family, farther down on the same road where he had spotted tire tracks the day before. Rubrecht [person in charge of government operations] said she didn't even know Rachor was in the air.
"I had no clue John Rachor [hero private pilot who saved family] was in the air until after Kati was found," she said. "No clue."
In fact, she said that "I really never felt like I had a handle on the air operation."
"I'm not afraid to tell anybody that it was overwhelming beyond anything I'd ever handled before," she said.
The government is looking for a scapegoat. I love to bash the media as much as the next guy, but television helicopters did not interfere with the search, except in the imaginations of government searchers looking for excuses.
bump
. . .and family members, looking for someone to blame as well. . .which, of course is 'natural'. . .
Needless to say; while I followed the 'unfolding'; as did a gazillion others; I have not read the 'finer print' here re this story and the rescue. . .
I hate the political nature of the media as much as any conservative. But the helicopters flown by various media are the farthest away from the lefties in the newsrooms that spew various garbage every day. The helicopter crews are the very least political part of the media.
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