Northwest to honor lives lost with annual 9/11 stair climb event

Northwest Missouri State University is commemorating lives lost during the events that transpired on 9/11 with its annual stair climb.

The stair climb will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 11, at Bearcat Stadium. The event is free and open to the public. Attendees must sign a waiver to participate in the 2,071-step challenge, which may be completed individually or in groups of two to five people.

Participants can register at Bearcat Stadium on the evening of the event.

Northwest’s Emergency and Disaster Management Club, the 1-129th Field Artillery of the Missouri National Guard and the Maryville Fire Department are partnering in support of the event.

Travis Surprise, an instructor of emergency and disaster management at Northwest, is serving as this year’s master of ceremonies and helping to organize the event.

“The value of this event is to learn our history, so it’s never repeated,” Surprise said. “We learn why 9/11 is so important and understand the physical exertion that was needed that day to save the lives they were able to save. We can teach the younger generation what happened that day and what came from those terrorist actions.”

The Maryville Fire Department will start the event with a bell ceremony and a moment of silence.

The Memorial Bell Tower, located at the center of the Northwest campus, will chime at 8:46 a.m., 9:03 a.m., 9:37 a.m. and 10:03 a.m., marking the times that each of the four planes crashed on 9/11.

Additionally, Northwest will play footage of the events of 9/11 on the Bearcat Stadium video board.

On Sept. 11, 2001, militants hijacked four airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States, flying two planes into the World Trade Center’s twin towers in New York City, a third into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a fourth plane crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. A total of 2,996 people died during the attacks, including 343 firefighters and paramedics, 23 New York City police officers and 37 Port Authority police officers who were attempting to evacuate the buildings and save others who had been injured.