In honor of the 343 firefighters killed when the World Trade Center collapsed after terrorists hijacked and crashed two planes into the New York City towers on 9/11, 46 EMT students participated in a memorial stair climb on September 11th and 12th. Each student did this out of respect for the fallen firefighters, some of whom had climbed 101 flights of steps in the twin towers. The ACL students climbed a total of 26,920 steps. Six students from the EMT class opted to wear weighted vests and filled their backpacks for the climb. One of them stated that he did this because “there’s no way to recreate the conditions they were under, but the least we can do is try to simulate the weight they had to carry up all of those steps.” A firefighter’s gear weighs around 75 pounds, and the high rise packs they carry into the building can weigh anywhere from 45 – 70 additional pounds. After the stair climb, the students had time to reflect, many of them voicing how much they underestimated the difficulty of climbing that many stairs, and how they couldn’t imagine the amount of drive and passion the first responders had working in such conditions to try and save the life of a stranger.

Credits to: Ms. Young