Photo: WOWT 6 News
(Omaha, NE) -- Saturday morning, hundreds of people participated in the 9/11 Stair Climb in Werner Park. The event gives people the opportunity to climb steps equivalent to the 110 flights of stairs firefighters climbed inside the World Trade Center buildings.
Volunteer fire fighter Eric Paulsen had all his gear on while climbing the stairs.
“It makes it really astonishing because those guys weren’t going in a smooth steady pace, they were rushing. They were in an emergency kind of situation and I can’t even imagine doing that twice as fast as we just did”, said Paulsen. He tells WOWT 6 it was tiring, but the job had to be done.
Soon to join the marine core, Kyle Soderson says he wanted to step in to remember what the first responders had to do.
“Obviously it wasn’t too easy of a challenge but once again you just have to remember that someone else did the same thing with harder circumstances”, said Soderson. He would go on to tell WOWT 6 ringing the bell after completing the challenge felt good, but to honor the fallen felt even better.