Furloughed National Park Service employees returned from the longest government shutdown in U.S. history pleased with the Chattanooga area’s respect for public land after a month of frustration that kept many employees home, without pay and away from the jobs they love.
Horror stories at other National Park facilities have been widely shared: feces build-up, litter, destruction of property and more. Area park service employees at the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park said they were eager to get back to work and thrilled to see how well citizens took care of the park in their absence. There was no trash build-up, little littering and no destruction.
Chief Ranger Todd Roeder, right, talks about the experience of enduring the government shutdown alongside Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park Superintendent Brad Bennett Friday in front of the Chickamauga Battlefield Visitors Center in Fort Oglethorpe.“There was very little trash. We appreciate the public for taking care of the park,” chief ranger Todd Roeder said. “I believe we did have some groups come in on weekends to help pick up trash if they saw it. That we’re grateful for. That was the surprising thing, though, driving around and not seeing much trash. We saw the pictures in Washington, D.C., and other places. We had nothing like that here.”
Roeder and his staff of rangers were required to work for free for more than a month to ensure safety. All other employees were furloughed. There was a lot of frustration during the shutdown, he said. Eventually, the government approved back pay and employees were compensated for the missed pay, but that wasn’t a certainty throughout the shutdown.
Work was different for those weeks, Roeder said. He walked through empty buildings with the lights off in the middle of the day, no employees bustling about, the heat turned down and the park largely empty. He fielded calls from the park service’s regional and national offices with updates on the shutdown. The desk work he needed to do largely couldn’t get done, so he spent more time patrolling the properties.