Hundreds gather at Red Rocks for 9/11 memorial stair climb
MORRISON, Colo. — For the past 13 years, hundreds of Coloradans have gathered at the famed Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre to pay tribute to the first responders and the lives lost in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
This year, two decades after that tragic day in which nearly 3,000 people died in New York City, Arlington, Virginia and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, more than 1,000 people climbed nine laps around the steps of Red Rocks, equaling the number of steps in the World Trade Center’s 110 stories.
The climb started at 8:46 a.m., the same time when the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center in 2001. Before the climb, organizers played audio of the news reports from that morning.
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Joshua Fell is a firefighter with Bennett-Watkins Fire Rescue in Bennett, Colorado. He participated in the stair climb Saturday.
"It's just overwhelming, really. Just thinking through what those firefighters were going through on 9/11," he said. "I mean, we know that we'll be done at the end of this [climb], but those [first responders on 9/11] had no idea what they were walking into."
Stair climbs have become one of the most popular ways to honor the memory and efforts of the 9/11 victims and first responders. A map from the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, a nonprofit that helped organize the Red Rocks climb, shows the scores of stair climb events taking place across the country on September 11.
As 5280 Magazine reported, the stair climb tradition started in Colorado. In 2005, five Denver-area firefighters donned their full gear and climbed the stairs of the 1999 Broadway building 33 times (again equaling the WTC’s 110 floors). The event became so popular in the years that followed that organizers capped the number of participants at 343—the same number of firefighters who died following the terrorist attacks.
[Related: Smithsonian Institution pieces together 9/11 history through personal, poignant relics]
This year, the Denver 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb took place at 1801 California St. in Denver.
On September 10, a new memorial including a piece of steel from the World Trade Center was dedicated near Denver International Airport.
Standing in front of the memorial, Denver Airport’s CEO Phil Washington brought focus to the heroes from that day. “It changed not just the aviation industry forever, but it changed this country forever,” he said. “On that horrific day 20 years ago we saw the heroic efforts from emergency responders: police, fire, paramedics. We also saw such effort from airline employees, passengers and so many others.”
At the top of the Red Rocks stairs Saturday was a “Flag of Honor” — an American flag containing the flags of all the 9/11 victims in miniscule font. Sheryl Cochran of Lakewood is the flag’s owner.
"It's very symbolic, Cochran said. "And we need to remember each of those names was attached to a family member."
Julio Sandoval is a multimedia journalist at Rocky Mountain PBS. You can reach him at juliosandoval@rmpbs.org.
Kyle Cooke is the Digital Media Manager at Rocky Mountain PBS. You can reach him at kylecooke@rmpbs.org.