FG Firefighters Climb for a Cure

The tallest building in Forest Grove comes in at a whopping four stories, but that doesn't stop our firefighters from traveling to Seattle every year to climb the tallest building on the West Coast. March 7th marked the fifth time that Forest Grove Firefighters have made the annual trek to the Emerald City to compete in the Scott Firefighter Stair Climb, a fundraiser for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and the largest firefighter competition in the world.

This intimidating view is from the ground as our team gets ready to enter Seattle's Columbia Center

This year our sixteen member team set a goal to raise $2,500 for their efforts, at the time of this post they had exceeded that and raised $2,670 to donate to the fight against blood cancers. For months, and even beginning after last years event our firefighters would give up their own time and go into Portland at night to climb 44 stories at "Big Pink" , sometimes climbing the US Bancorp Tower multiple times each night to try and simulate the grueling 69 story climb in Seattle. All told the stair climb team would have to climb 69 floors in full firefighter gear while breathing only the air from the self contained breathing apparatus that we typically use inside of a hazardous area. In total all of this gear weighs close to 60 pounds and isn't your typical exercise clothing. With all of this weighing them down they have to climb 1,311 steps and what amounts to 788 vertical feet to get to the top and finish the event.

C Shift Captain Joe Smith changes air bottles on the 40th floor. Joe finished the event in just over 32 minutes.

During the event firefighters are grouped by age and gender as well as overall to determine their finishing place. Once again volunteer Firefighter Chad Bettencourt was our team leader finishing the event in 15 minutes 52 seconds. Chad finished 114th overall (out of 1294), and was around 5 minutes slower then the overall leader; Kory Burgess, a 28 year old from Missoula Montana who made the climb in 11 minutes and 1 second. Our youngest member on the team was 19 year old volunteer and former High School Cadet Damian Peters, who finished in 21 minutes and 20 seconds. Our team leader, C Shift Captain Joe Smith is also our oldest team member and finished the climb in 32 minutes 11 seconds, Joe actually has been instrumental in our getting involved in this event and has been the Forest Grove team leader every year.

Firefighters are already looking forward to next year, in fact a group was already in Portland climbing stairs the day after they returned from Seattle. More often then not the question our team members get is "why in the world would you put yourself through this?" Simply put, because of the smoke and things that we are exposed to in our jobs firefighters are more at risk for cancer then other groups. In fact in the case of Lymphoma firefighters are 50% more likely to become sick then the rest of our society. We work hard to prevent this and limit our exposure, but we cant stop it all, this event helps us fight these terrible cancers and win this battle against one of the largest killers of America's firefighters.

Here are the rest of our times with the overall finish out of 1294 who finished the event:

Chad Bettencourt 15 minutes 52.40 seconds 113th overall
Keith Baas 19 minutes 14.50 seconds 428th
Jake Stone 19 minutes 39.80 seconds 477nd
Damian Peters 21 minutes 20.15 seconds 613th
Nick McEvoy 21 minutes 24.20 seconds 621st
Ivan Bratchuk 21 minutes 57.75 seconds 624th
Ben Langbehn 21 minutes 57.75 seconds 683rd
Chad Toomey 22 minutes 4.35 seconds 706th
Joe Olson 24 minutes 37.75 seconds 876th
Will Murphy 26 minutes 27.15 seconds 986th
Brad Shinpaugh 27 minutes 59.55 seconds 1038th
Mindy Ingebretson 28 minutes 59.35 seconds 1066th
Joe Smith 32 minutes 11.45 seconds 1139th
Jason Miller 35 minutes 8.10 seconds 1183rd
Tony Carter 35 minutes 20.45 seconds 1186th

Good Job Everyone!