Saturday, December 16, 2006

Missing Hiker's Dumb Decisions Put Others At Risk

American’s don’t hope for harm to come to others but many are growing tired of stories about individual’s idiotic decisions which put other lives at risk. The missing hikers on Mount Hood are a perfect example of people venturing into danger for no reason, especially when they knew difficult conditions were coming.

The storm that hit Oregon was not a surprise. It caused damage that hadn’t been seen in that state for some time and at least six people were killed while millions more are still without power. For these three individuals to purposefully place themselves in harm’s way and then force others to do the same to rescue them is unacceptable. Out of that storm that hit the Pacific Northwest, one woman died drowning in her basement. A man was killed in his sleep when a tree fell on his house. At least two other people died in traffic accidents. What’s sickening is that most people will never know those victim’s names but for the next three months we’ll be inundated with news stories about these foolish hikers, we’ll be hearing from their grieving wives and should they survive, every talk show will have the “Hero Hikers” front and center, ad nauseam.

It’s not news and it shouldn’t be treated as such. You want to be stupid and climb a mountain in a storm, good luck. I just wish the media would do us all a favor and keep it off our television screens.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think this entire effort to rescue the climbers encourages other like-minded individuals to attempt similarily dumb stunts. Whether the climbers live or are found dead, people are still left with the impression that they can act in any irresponsible way and if they need to be rescued, a massive search will be launched to save them.

1:39 PM  

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