The News.com Lounge: Lessons learned from Kim tragedy

Irrelevant

Your suggestions are well-intentioned but irrelevant. The Kims, and people like them, don't prepare for anything. They rely on their four-wheel drive and their overconfidence in modern life in general.

Look, those people left San Francisco and spent Thanksgiving in Seattle in 2006. This was during the wettest month in Pacific Northwest history. Everyone was talking about it at the time. There had been floods in Seattle, and the weekend they left there was a major storm, with snow, predicted for the region.

They ignored all of that. They stopped at a chamber of commerce tourist center for maps. They asked for directions to the coast and were told not to take the back roads. They ignored the advice.

The map they got had not one but two warnings about winter weather. One a general warning, and the other a red-box warning pointing toward the road they used. Along the way, they passed not one or two, but FOUR large yellow road signs warning of snow. Which, at some point along their journey, was falling outside of their windows.

Did they turn back? Nope. Oh, and before they got to where they were stranded, they didn't even gas up the car when they stopped at a gas station for directions. They didn't have enough food or water, and no one had winter clothes in the car.

And you're advising people like this of survival websites? No, no, no, no, no. What urban yuppies need to know is something far more basic: If you're out there on the road during bad weather, keep your head in the game. Use your common sense. Pay attention to road signs and directions. Don't let a hotel reservation rule your life.

For the complete story about the Kim tragedy, see http://www.kimtragedy.info