Sioux Falls man offers up empty RV to nurses during coronavirus fight

As healthcare professionals continue fighting COVID-19 on the frontlines, many of them are trying to find a temporary place to live to avoid exposing their families to the virus. So a Facebook group is helping provide these medical workers with a free and safe place to stay.

The Facebook Page is called RVs 4 MD. Since late March, volunteers on the Facebook page have helped match RV owners with medical providers in their area, including in Sioux Falls.

Tim Klein usually gets the most use out of his RV in the winter when him and his wife head to Arizona. So this summer they’ll be lending it to two nurses for free.

“Found out about RVs for MDs by watching a Saturday morning news show and they had a short article about that and my wife and I thought, ‘Why not?’” said Klein.

The RV will sit on the nurses property and allow them to stay a safe distance from their family. The nurses want to remain anonymous, but Klein still wants to share this story in case others need help or want to help.

”You know there’s a lot of people that are in occupations that are putting them at risk. They’re being exposed and this was a simple way to help them out a little bit and reduce some stress on them,” said Klein.

The national group started in Texas by Emily Phillips. She’s a mother of three young kids and has a husband who is an ER doctor.

”He was bringing home all these germs I’d suspect because he sees between 100 to 150 patients a day,” said Phillips.

”I seriously felt powerless like, ‘What are we going to do?' So my mom actually had the idea `What if you see if someone has a camper or RV you could rent?'"

Through mutual friends, Emily met Holly Haggard who was willing to rent out her RV for Free. After that the two formed the group so they could help others. And the requests came flooding in.

"Then it went from 300 to 400 and then 600 and then 800 and then the next morning I woke up and we had 1,439 members in our group,” said Haagard.

They now have over 31,000 members and have made around 1,400 matches.

For more information on RVs 4 MDs click here:

https://www.facebook.com/RVs4MDs/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/rvs4mds/