In the Field with Emergency Services Volunteer Bob Derr

Behind the Scenery

Have you ever wondered what it's like to volunteer at a National Park? Bob Derr has been volunteering on the North Rim of Grand Canyon for six years in emergency services. Join us as we discuss his time here and and the value of volunteering.

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Bob Derr: My name is Bob Derr, my wife Lori here, we’re volunteers here for Grand Canyon National Park. We perform fire, structural fire, I do and then we both do EMS and search and rescue and a variety of other things whatever is usually ask of us up here on the North Rim [Guitar music begins] Kate Hensel: My name is Kate and you’re listening to an episode of Behind the Scenery, Canyon Cuts. [Guitar music ends] How long have you been volunteering with the National Park Service? Bob: This is year six. Kate: And before you started volunteering with the National Park Service did you perceive it differently? How has that perhaps changed for you? Bob: Well, I don’t know if we had a perception of what it was, we were getting ready to retire, Lori had already retired, I was getting ready to and it's…you know people had talked about “Hey you can volunteer for the park service and do different duties.” We researched on the Volunteer.gov and just started researching what positions were available and then we decided to pick a park to start with, so we decided Grand Canyon. The chief asked about coming over here to the North Rim as a structural firefighter, being a paramedic which I am, and it just escalated from there. Kate: Can you give a brief background on like your professional history before retirement? Bob: Well for Lori she was an administrative assistant in a Catholic School. My history is I started in the fire service in 1971. I’m a retire battalion chief out of Myrtle Beach South Carolina. Been a paramedic since the eighties. I flew eight years as a flight medic. Was in charge of a regional urban search and rescue team in South Carolina. So background in emergency services, I have a pretty decent background. Kate: What was your first Grand Canyon experience? Bob: Jeez, our first experience we brought our kids here. I guess that was back in the mid-nineties. We were doing a cross-country trip and brought the four kids, so we brought the kids here to the South Rim. Came back again, it was about 2013, we were heading out to California for a wedding and stopped at the South Rim again with my sister and her husband. Kate: When you were looking at different volunteer opportunities was Grand Canyon high on the list or was it just something that you fell into? Bob: No, after we talked about what park do we wanted to start with, because our plan was to go to different parks each year, but Grand Canyon was on the number one to start selecting. Kate: And then what brought you back here over and over again. Bob: I think the big thing was that just we love the North Rim. I mean the community that we have here, with the rangers that we work with, you know the people from Forever Resorts. I mean everyone we work with up here, it’s like a small community that’s pretty tight nit you know. If somebody something, somebody was there to help you. So I think that’s it, the environment itself; the weather on the North Rim, the beauty of the North Rim is one of the big things that we like. We kinda like the isolation. You know, away from the crowds. The city that we used to live in we’d get 14-15 million tourists there that used to visit there. So being up here was awesome. Kate: A lot of people might not realize that the North Rim is a pretty seasonal operation, and we get a ton of snow up here, so what do you do in your winters? Bob: While the past three years usually January and February we go to the big island of Hawaii and volunteer at Hawaii Volcanos and do interp[retation] there. And one of the reasons we go back to Hawaii is because Lori is from the islands, so we get an opportunity to stay with family and visit family, and continue our service of the parks by volunteering at the volcano. Kate: Being able to spend so much time returning to the same place that a lot people may only visit once, how has that changed your view of Grand Canyon over time? Bob: I don’t know how much it’s changed my view. When we were tourist visiting the South Rim it was ”oh wow this is pretty amazing place.” But once we started volunteering up here on the North Rim we really got to see Grand Canyon. I mean not just driving by and looking at Grand Canyon but to go out to a lot of different places that most people do not get to go to, or when we’re out on patrol, and really seeing, and even it’s still a small portion of Grand Canyon National Park that we get to see. This year we started kayaking so we got to kayak up by Horseshoe Bend and down the Colorado River. So now we are getting another perspective of Grand Canyon. About the second year I was here my oldest daughter, myself, and a couple other friends hiked the rim to rim in a couple days and being down in the canyon really changes your perspective. You really, really get to see what this beautiful place is. Kate: So before you had mentioned that the community is one of the driving forces that brings you back every year. With the community also being made of so many seasonal workers who often move from one park to another and you don’t necessarily have a lot of longevity of people who stick around, how has that impacted your life? Bob: Having the permanents, again that communities there, and even the seasonals coming in, they’re seeing what the people that are here all the time haver to offer. So we get to meet a lot of new people, mostly a lot of young people that are coming in seasonal in the park service and get to meet them and learn where their from and some of the things that they think about. Kate: What are you most proud of about being on the North Rim? Bob: The thing that we’re most proud of is that we don’t hesitate to help whether it be a medical, a fire call, or we’re on a search and rescue, or somebody locks their key in their car and we go break into their car and get their key. So I think it’s service, I think that what is comes down to. Our entire lives have been service at some point. With Lori working in the school and me doing emergency services in wherever we lived so it’s giving back what it’s all about. Kate: Are there any particularly funny or interesting stories that you’d want to share? Bob: Some of things when you start talking to people cause we just talk to people while we’re taking care of them because were not with them 10-15 minutes and we’re to a hospital like you are in a big city. We’re with them for quite a while, especially if we’re transporting or waiting for a medevac helicopter. So we really get to share a lot stories between each other. Kate: How long are transports usually? If you are doing it by ground. Bob: Our longest was we had to transport a young lady that was pregnant all the way to St. George. So you look at two and a half, three hours one way on that transport. That was our longest. Usually the transports from the time we start the medical call to if we’re transporting down towards Kanab, outside of Fredonia, we actually do a change. An ambulance will come out of Utah and we’ll transfer the patient so we can back up here. It can run anywhere from two and half to three hours on that transport going down and coming back for the entire length of the call. Kate: What are some challenges or misconceptions about EMS work that you think a lot of people might not be aware of? Bob: I think the challenges that I first had when we got here, so I lived the city we had a trauma center within ten minutes of transport time for our medics. So the challenge that I had is I was used to number one: I had a trauma center real close; number two: being a battalion chief in a city like that I had resources I could have by my side within a matter of minutes if it was major incident or there was multiple patients. The challenge up here was again we’re isolated. We have one medic unit up here. We can call for helicopters, but they could be twenty, thirty, forty minutes away. So, the challenge here is definitely rural medicine and being with the patient a lot longer and having to take care of them in the process of that. So our protocols at Grand Canyon, which is pretty amazing, they have us trained to take care of those long times that we may be taking care of a patient or again our resources that we have are limited. Again one ambulance and if we have multiple calls going on, which has happened, we only have one ambulance to take care of that patient and we got to determine at that point if we can get a helicopter in here. So the challenges are just being so isolated. The closest hospital by ground is in Kanab and it’s eighty miles by ground. Kate: What do you want for the future of Grand Canyon? Bob: For me personally, and I think Lori would probably agree to this, that we would like to see the people who come here will respect this place. Not just to all the beauty of the place. What Grand Canyon means not just to the visitors but to the Native Americans, that this is their home. A lot of people I don’t think they really realize what this means to the Native Americans that are in this area. There are quite a few tribes that are here. So, for people to respect it. To see somebody leave trash or to drive where they shouldn’t be driving or to mark up the place with graffiti and that, that’s heartbreaking when you really think about it. They don’t respect it, they don’t understand it. Kate: Anything else you would like to get on the record? Bob: Number one is for people to come and enjoy what our country has to offer: Grand Canyon, and all the parks that are so close. To come and embrace what our country has, but also to think about when you retire giving back. What better way to give back to our country is to volunteer for the park service and Lori and I get to live at Grand Canyon, on the North Rim. I right now, I can look out and see the canyon from where my RV is parked. What a better opportunity to come and volunteer for the park service. [Guitar music begins] Kate: Thank you for listening to this episode of Canyon Cuts, a Behind the Scenery micro episode. Brought to you by the North Rim and Canyon District interpretation teams at Grand Canyon National Park. [Guitar fades out] To learn about volunteering for the National Park Service visit https://www.nps.gov/getinvolved/volunteer.htm and https://www.volunteer.gov This episode was produced by Kate Hensel with assistance from Wayne Hartlerode for the National Park Service. This episode was recorded in September 2020 on the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park. Thank you, Bob Derr for being interviewed and thank you Bob and Lori for your many years of service to the National Park Service and our country.