MORRISVILLE -- Even if he had more than six stories of stairs to climb, said firefighter Alex Fantauzzi, there is no way to duplicate what his counterparts in New York faced when they arrived at the World Trade Center 10 years ago.
Fantauzzi and 41 other firefighters from as far away as Virginia signed up today to walk the same distance - 3.1 miles - as the 110 floors of stairs in the twin towers.
The event, hosted by Morrisville Fire and Rescue, was one of several dozen throughout the country today to honor the 343 firefighters who died at Ground Zero and raise money for the families of fallen firefighters.
In some of the other cities, participants had taller buildings and climbed a full 110 floors. Here, they did four loops, each time climbing the stairs to the sixth floor of an office building near Interstate 40, then walking a long circle through the parking lot before re-entering the building until they had covered the distance.
No matter how it was done, it could only be symbolic, Fantauzzi said.
"This gives you just a little idea of it, but just a little," he said, sweating heavily as he strode his final lap.
"This is a controlled environment, they had more gear, and even if you had a 100-story building right here, there wouldn't be the sounds, the airliners hitting, the chaos of the thousands of people going down as you're going up, the adrenaline pumping and all your training kicking in."
Speakers at the event included Tony Chiotakis, a long-time Morrisville emergency official. He quoted Deputy U.S. Fire Administrator Glenn Gaines about the nature of first responders.
"They don't ask - they serve," he said. "They don't talk - they act. ... They have one very simple job description: they're expected to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the right stuff."
Many of the firefighters who walked the course Sunday were, like Fantauzzi, dressed in their heavy, heat-resistant suits, air tanks and helmets, and carried axes. All were carrying several laminated cards that each bore the name and unit of a firefighter who died when the towers fell.
The cards that Jeff Braun of Durham Highway Volunteer Fire Department carried on a lanyard around his neck included that for Thomas P. Cullen of Squad 41. After he was assigned his cards, Braun, who works for a medical IT company in Raleigh, researched the dead firefighters.
Cullen was 31 when he died, and had a 2-year-old son he doted on. Many nights Cullen would wait until the boy fell asleep, then reconfigure the tracks of the child's electric train set.
"He wanted Tom to be excited when he came downstairs every morning," Cullen's wife, Susan, told the Associated Press. "He spent his day thinking about how he would design it."
Braun, who has a 2-year-old himself, said he immediately related to Cullen's story. "You know these were great guys because of what they did," he said. "But it's really interesting to find out more about them."
Fantauzzi did his laps with his eight cards arrayed around his helmet, which drew cheers from bystanders. He said that he didn't get the e-mail telling him which names he would walk with, so he didn't know until he arrived this morning and an organizer handed him the cards.
As he finished the last lap, and several of his fellow firefighters gathered around to help him strip off his gear, Fantauzzi said that he planned to research the names on his card, too.
"I'm taking these home with me," he said. "And I will keep them the rest of my life."
