Austin Firefighters honor 9/11 heroes with 'Memorial Stair Climb'

AUSTIN, Texas - 9/11:  If you were old enough to remember, you'll never forget what it was like.

"As the attack on the Pentagon happened, everybody realized that we were at war.  We were trying to process what happened, bringing people in, not knowing what the next hit might be," said Austin Fire Department Division Chief Palmer Buck.  

Lt. Jerry Cohen was a cadet in the Austin Fire Academy when 343 firefighters in New York City gave their lives doing a job he was about to undertake.
                
The day after: 9/12, Cohen and his classmates paid tribute to those heroes.

"Our instructor told us to get all of our bunker gear on, get a hose pack, wear an air pack which is the equivalent to probably 75 to 100 pounds of weight and we're going to finish the climb that they couldn't do the day before," Cohen said.

17 years later at the Pleasant Valley Training Tower, Austin Firefighters are still making that memorial climb.

In complete silence, Cohen says firefighters walk the 6-story tower 9 times.  54 flights up and down, roughly matching the height of the World Trade Center towers.

"We're a big city.  But our whole city doesn't match the number of firefighters that they lost that day that we have on duty every day," Buck said.

Division Chief Palmer Buck helped organize dog tags with the names of their brothers and sisters from FDNY.

"Our firefighters, a lot of them get the name tag and they match it up with the picture on our board," Buck said.

Buck says the memorial climb combined with other 9/11 remembrances like the service at the Buford Fire Tower earlier in the morning are near and dear to the heart and have become a staple on September 11th.

"Allows us to renew our promise to continue to be as a first responder...the first line of defense when bad things happen," Buck said.         

Brittney Johnson is a second-generation firefighter.  She says her dad has been with AFD for 28 years. She was in 7th grade when the towers were hit.  Johnson says she walks to remember the firefighters killed in New York City and those who lose their lives every day as first responders.

"The bundles are heavy, the gear is heavy but when you decide to do this job, [you] pretty much can do it or you can't.  So I got used to it, bit the bullet and that's what everybody else here does too.  That's what they were doing when they had to climb up all the flights of stairs," Johnson said.  

Buck says it's not just about remembrance, it's also about training.

As Austin builds high-rise after high-rise, someday firefighters may have to make a climb like this.

They're expected to be ready for it.