Photo By Scott Sturkol | Fort McCoy firefighters participate in the 2026 9/11 Memorial Run and Stair Climb on...... read more read more
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Twenty-five years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the memory of the emergency responders who ran toward danger that morning remains deeply connected to the work of firefighters who continue to answer calls for help today.
That connection was especially visible Sept. 11, 2026, at Fort McCoy as Firefighter/Emergency Medical Technician Brandon Perron and fellow Fort McCoy Directorate of Emergency Services Fire Department firefighters Stephen Darling and Luke Erickson participated in the installation’s annual 9/11 Memorial Run and Stair Climb.
Nearly 100 Soldiers, veterans, military retirees, Fort McCoy employees and others participated in the 2026 event, which included a 2.975-mile run/1.34-mile walk followed by a stair climb inside one of Fort McCoy’s four-story barracks buildings. The stair climb is designed as a physical remembrance of the thousands of emergency responders who climbed the stairs of the World Trade Center towers after the attacks.
For Perron, the event has become a deeply personal tradition.
Perron, a Sparta, Wisconsin, native, was in fifth grade when the attacks occurred. In previous years, he explained that watching the events unfold helped inspire his decision to become a firefighter.
“I kind of knew at that point that firefighting was something that I wanted to do,” Perron said in a 2025 Fort McCoy interview.
In 2024 and 2025, Perron completed the Fort McCoy event wearing his full firefighter turnout gear and carrying more than 100 pounds of equipment. In 2025, it marked his second consecutive year completing the event in that manner.
The equipment was not simply extra weight.
Perron carried a high-rise pack and a New York hook as a way of symbolically representing the equipment firefighters carried into the World Trade Center. The firefighters responding to the towers had to take breathing-air bottles, hose and other tools up hundreds of feet of stairs because elevators were unavailable or unsafe.
“It’s to honor the 343 firefighters who perished on 9/11 and those who have perished since because of cancer related issues,” Perron said in 2024. “But it’s also just in the totality of the circumstances that everybody who has either fought in the wars following and lost their lives or the civilians who lost their lives. Police officers … everybody who was involved with 9/11 … just to honor and respect them for what they’ve gone through and what their families are going through currently.”
That remembrance extends far beyond the 343 members of the Fire Department of the City of New York who died that day.
Remembering New York's emergency responders
The attacks on the World Trade Center produced what was one of the largest emergency mobilizations in New York City history.
Firefighters, police officers and emergency medical personnel from throughout the New York area responded to the World Trade Center. They faced an almost unimaginable rescue mission as thousands of civilians attempted to escape the burning towers.
After American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower at 8:46 a.m., and United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower at 9:03 a.m., emergency responders moved toward the buildings while civilians moved away.
Firefighters entered the towers to search for and evacuate civilians. Police officers helped direct people toward safety. Emergency medical personnel treated injured people and established medical operations around the disaster site.
Then the towers collapsed, and 343 FDNY firefighters died on 9/11. There were 23 members of the New York City Police Department died, and 37 members of the Port Authority Police Department died.
In all, 411 emergency workers were killed in the attacks.
Those numbers represent individuals — firefighters, police officers, paramedics, emergency medical technicians and other responders — who reported for duty that morning and answered a call unlike anything they had encountered before.
For the FDNY, the loss was particularly devastating. Fire companies from throughout New York City responded to the World Trade Center. Firefighters climbed upward into the towers carrying the equipment necessary to perform rescues and fight fires. Many never came back down.
Their sacrifice also continued long after Sept. 11, 2001. Thousands of first responders and survivors have experienced illnesses associated with exposure to the toxic dust and debris at the World Trade Center site. Numerous emergency responders have died in the years since from illnesses attributed to their service at Ground Zero.
That continuing loss is part of what Perron has sought to recognize through his participation at Fort McCoy.
A legacy carried forward
That idea — answering the call when others need help — is familiar to the Fort McCoy Fire Department.
The installation’s firefighters protect a nearly 60,000-acre Army training center, but their emergency-response mission also reaches beyond the installation through mutual-aid agreements with surrounding communities.
Fort McCoy firefighters have provided assistance during structure fires, vehicle accidents, water rescues, wildland fires and other emergencies throughout the region. The department's capabilities have also expanded well beyond traditional structural firefighting.
For nearly 15 years, Fort McCoy has maintained a specialized scuba dive team, providing a technical-rescue capability that is uncommon among Army fire departments. The team conducts surface and underwater rescue and recovery operations and provides mutual-aid support to surrounding communities.
Its specialized equipment includes dry suits, full-face masks and wireless underwater communications systems. Firefighters regularly train for open-water and ice-rescue operations at Fort McCoy's lakes.
That training has translated into real-world response.
In January 2019, Fort McCoy firefighters responded to an emergency at Perch Lake in Sparta after children fell through the ice, including one who went beneath the surface. Seven firefighters on duty responded, while three additional firefighters came from home to support the dive team.
The department also regularly trains in technical rescue, including rope rescue and high- and low-angle operations.
Fort McCoy maintains aircraft-rescue firefighting capabilities near the Sparta-Fort McCoy Airport, giving the department specialized capabilities for aviation emergencies.
Service beyond the gates
One of the clearest examples of the department’s commitment to surrounding communities came during the catastrophic flooding of August 2018.
After portions of the region received as much as 12 inches of rain, flash flooding overwhelmed communities near Fort McCoy.
Fort McCoy firefighters were called to provide mutual aid.
They responded with personnel, boats and vehicles to Sparta, Melvina and Leon. The department deployed eight firefighters, three boats and four support vehicles during the flood-rescue operations.
Firefighters used boats to reach residents trapped by rapidly rising water. In one case, crews helped evacuate a senior citizen and her granddaughter from a home as floodwater rushed through the area. In another, firefighters used boats to reach residents who were unable to leave their homes.
Overall, emergency responders working in Leon, Sparta and Melvina helped save 57 people and 27 pets.
Among the Fort McCoy firefighters participating in those flood-rescue operations was Luke Erickson, who joined Perron and Darling for the 2026 9/11 Memorial Run and Stair Climb.
That connection gives the 2026 event an especially meaningful dimension. Erickson has not only trained to respond to emergencies. He has answered the call during an actual disaster, helping people in danger in communities surrounding Fort McCoy.
Equipment built for the mission
The Fort McCoy Fire Department’s equipment reflects the breadth of its emergency-response mission.
During the 2018 floods, firefighters used boats capable of navigating dangerous floodwaters. The department's skimmer boat is a 20-foot, water-jet-propelled boat capable of operating in shallow water.
The department’s dive equipment allows firefighters to conduct underwater searches in conditions ranging from open water to beneath the ice.
During annual ice-diving training, divers use dry suits and full-face masks while remaining connected by tether and communications lines to firefighters on the surface. This allows the team to practice lost-diver and underwater-search scenarios under controlled conditions.
The department also maintains specialized wildland firefighting equipment. In March 2026, Fort McCoy firefighters responded to a wildland fire in the installation's North Impact Area after training munitions ignited dry vegetation. Nine firefighters deployed with four brush trucks and a wildland utility terrain vehicle.
The brush trucks carried water tanks, pumps, hoses and wildland tools, while the UTV provided a smaller, highly maneuverable firefighting platform for areas larger vehicles could not easily reach.
Firefighters established a firebreak using back-burn operations and contained the fire in less than two hours without requiring outside mutual aid.
Earlier in 2026, Fort McCoy firefighters also provided mutual-aid assistance during a fire in Tomah.
Each response is different. The equipment changes. The circumstances change. The people needing help change. But the mission remains the same.
Remembering through service
For Darling, Erickson and Perron, participating in the 2026 event placed them among the many Fort McCoy Soldiers, veterans, employees and community members who came together to remember Sept. 11.
For these three firefighters, however, the morning carried an additional meaning. They are members of the profession that was so profoundly affected that morning 25 years ago.
They wear protective equipment.
They train for emergencies that can change in seconds.
They climb toward danger while others are trying to get away.
And they understand the weight of the tools they carry.
Perron’s participation in previous years made that symbolism especially visible. Carrying more than 100 pounds of firefighter equipment up the stairs was a physical representation of what firefighters faced inside the World Trade Center.
In 2026, he was joined by Darling and Erickson.
Together, the three Fort McCoy firefighters honored the fallen by doing something firefighters have done for generations: showing up, carrying the equipment, climbing the stairs and answering the call.
The Fort McCoy 9/11 Memorial Run and Stair Climb cannot recreate what happened in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001.
It does something more important.
It remembers.
It remembers the civilians who never made it home.
It remembers the firefighters, police officers, paramedics and other emergency responders who ran toward danger.
It remembers the families who lost loved ones.
And it reminds those who continue to serve that the legacy of those responders lives not only in memorials and ceremonies, but in the everyday actions of people willing to help others in their greatest moments of need.
Twenty-five years later, three Fort McCoy firefighters carried that legacy up the stairs. And with every step, they carried the memory of those who never came back down.
Fort McCoy’s motto beginning in 2026 is “Training the Total Force and Shaping the Future since 1909.” The installation’s mission: “Fort McCoy strengthens Total Force Readiness by serving as a training center, Mobilization Force Generation Installation, and Strategic Support Area enabling warfighter lethality to deploy, fight, and win our nation’s wars.”
And Fort McCoy’s vision is, “To be the premier training center supporting the most capable, combat-ready, and lethal armed forces.”
Located in the heart of the upper Midwest, Fort McCoy is the only U.S. Army installation in Wisconsin. The installation has provided support and facilities for the field and classroom training of more than 100,000 military personnel from all services nearly every year since 1984.
Learn more about Fort McCoy online athttps://home.army.mil/mccoy, on Facebook by searching “ftmccoy,” on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/fortmccoywi, and on X (formerly Twitter) by searching “usagmccoy.” Also try downloading the My Army Post app to your smartphone and set “Fort McCoy” or another installation as your preferred base. Fort McCoy is also part of Army’s Installation Management Command where “We Are The Army’s Home.”
| Date Taken: | 09.15.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 09.15.2026 19:26 |
| Story ID: | 574818 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
| Web Views: | 20 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Weight they carry: Fort McCoy firefighters honor those lost on 9/11, by Scott Sturkol, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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