Cordell Firefighters Participate In National Stair Climb Challenge

Three Cordell firefighters traveled to Oklahoma City over the past weekend to participate in the annual 9/11 Stair Climb. The event is held each year to honor the memory of New York firefighters killed during the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City and the subsequent rescue operations.

Tom Boecker, Nikki Vanderpool, and Ryder Campbell joined 340 other firefighters and 61 law enforcement officers in the city, and thousands in other cities around the country, in climbing 110 flights of stairs in the memory of those lost on Sept. 11, 2001.

The first 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb took place just two years after the attacks on the United States, during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. Albuquerque FD Lieutenant Charles Cogburn ran up a two story building in Parwan Province 53 times wearing full body armor, a helmet, and carrying an M-4 rifle. After being rotated back stateside, Lt. Cogburn started the event in Albuquerque in 2004.

The event spread in 2005, when five Colorado firefighters decided to climb 110 flights of stairs, wearing all of their gear, in a downtown Denver building. The event soon grew in Denver. In 2007 attendance reached several hundred, prompting organizers to cap participation at 343 - the number of FDNY members killed on Sept. 11, 2001.

In 2009, Denver organizers partnered with the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation to make the event national. The first Oklahoma event was held in Oklahoma City in 2012.