Gainesville marks 25 years since 9/11 as Texoma firefighters sign up for Oklahoma City climb

Gainesville Fire-Rescue will mark the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks with a ceremony Friday morning at Station 3, and firefighters from three Texoma-area departments are rostered to climb 110 floors in Oklahoma City the next day.

The Sept. 6 roster for the Oklahoma City climb lists Durant firefighters Jacob Argo, Jay Bergner and Chris Bryant, along with personnel from Healdton and Ardmore. The roster shows who signed up, not who climbed or what they wore. The organizer has set that event for Sept. 12 and puts the ascent at 110 floors, honoring fallen firefighters, law-enforcement officers and emergency medical personnel. Turnout gear and a self-contained breathing apparatus are encouraged, the participation rules say, and both are optional.

The Gainesville ceremony begins at 9 a.m. at Station 3, 308 N. Culberson St., with a community blood drive to follow, the department announced. The memorial at that station holds steel recovered from the World Trade Center. The city's adopted fiscal 2021 budget records that the 9/11 memorial, the bell and the retiree monument were moved to the new Station 3, and gives the station's public grand opening as Sept. 11, 2020.

The floor count carries the meaning. Each original World Trade Center tower rose 110 floors, according to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. The FDNY records 343 members killed while responding to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a figure that is not the full toll among responders. New York City's historical account separately records 23 city police officers and 37 Port Authority officers killed.

The practice started small. The National Fallen Firefighters Foundation traces the first climb supporting its mission to five Colorado firefighters who went up 110 flights in Denver on Sept. 11, 2005. Sign-ups hit a 343-person cap in 2008, and in 2010 the organizers partnered with the foundation so other communities could hold their own.

Dallas ran its first climb in 2011, drawing more than 360 firefighters from 89 departments and raising nearly $160,000 for fallen firefighters' families, its organizer says, and later added law-enforcement and EMS representation and a second wave for responders who died after the attacks. Dallas scheduled its 15th annual climb for Sept. 5, 2026, limited to eligible active-duty paid and volunteer responders. Abilene announced a Sept. 11 climb at Shotwell Stadium, 2,200 steps standing in for 110 stories, with proceeds to the September 11 Memorial and Museum's Never Forget Fund.

The losses did not end in 2001. On Sept. 9, 2025, the FDNY reported more than 400 deaths from World Trade Center-related illness and added 39 names to its memorial wall. Members of the World Trade Center Health Program who live outside the New York metropolitan area receive care through a Nationwide Provider Network, according to the city's spring 2025 health newsletter. The National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, which promotes the climbs, asks firefighters to limit turnout-gear use to work that requires its protection, citing concern about PFAS exposure.