Firefighting is one of the toughest jobs one can think of. It takes a certain kind of person to choose a career that puts you in danger on a nearly daily basis. It takes a strong body just to wear the firefighter gear alone and a cool head to keep calm and focused during physical exertion. Knowing that, it makes you wonder why a firefighter would voluntarily don one hundred pounds of firefighter gear and run up 2,880 steps in one hour on his day off.
On Sunday, May 7, four Mattapoisett firefighters travelled to Gillette Stadium in Foxboro and did just that. Not for the fun of it, not for the glory, and certainly not for the exercise; they did it for charity.
Lieutenant Justin Dubois and firefighters Justin Blue, Silas Costa, and Bill Oliver participated in the S4RT (Stairs 4 Our Troops) stair climb at Gillette Stadium, with the proceeds from the fundraiser going to Homes For Our Troops (HFOT), an organization that builds specially adaptive homes for severely injured veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.
Every year now, Mattapoisett Fire Rescue participates in a stair climb for charity. They’ve climbed the steps of a 26-story building in Providence one year, and then after that for two years they climbed the 61-story Clarendon Building in Boston – a feat that is akin to a “Boston Marathon” of all charity stair climbs of sorts. This year, though, they topped that event, with the one-hour long challenge of climbing 2,880 steps – with all their firefighting gear on to boot.
“We had just heard about it through social media,” said Dubois, “so we took the initiative and signed up for it.”
Three other fire departments in Massachusetts joined Mattapoisett – Dedham, Westwood, and Needham.
Climbing 2,880 stairs is a hard task. But with all that gear bearing down on you with every footstep up, the difference, said Dubois, is “drastic.”
“It felt like it was never going to end,” Dubois described the experience. ”It’s hard to explain, just because when you’re wearing 80 to 100 pound of extra gear, every little bit takes a toll on you.”
Even with the sunny, cool-ish, breezy weather, it was still a constant challenge for the four men, Dubois said. It was a constant battle to make it to the end of that hour.
“It was a really good time though,” said Dubois. “It was the biggest one that we’ve done so far.
As for next year? Well, this year’s climb will be pretty tough to top.
“We’re not sure where to go from this one,” said Dubois. “We always try to do the next step up,” no pun intended. “Now that we’ve hit this stage, I think we might have hit the max, so well see.”
By Jean Perry
