Bishop Ross Bay of Auckland joined 80 of his firefighting colleagues on Saturday in a sweaty yet solemn September 11 tribute to fallen firefighters.

Together, in full firefighting ‘turnout’ gear, and lugging 25kg breathing cylinders on their backs, they scaled the 28 floor stairwell of the Queen St BNZ in downtown Auckland.

It was their annual tribute to the 56 Kiwis who’ve given their lives over the years in turning out at emergency incidents – and the date chosen, September 11, also commemorates the 343 New York firefighters who were killed in the 2001 World Trade Centre attacks.

Bishop Ross, who is a longstanding volunteer with the Auckland Fire Police, had led the prayers before last year’s inaugural climb.

This year he again led those prayers – and then he joined his fellow firefighters in scaling the 549 stairs of the tower.

Each of those climbing firefighters carried a ‘tally’ (an identifying tag used for headcounts at fires) bearing the name of a fallen Kiwi firefighter, or the truck number of a crew whose members had died in New York in 9/11.

Bishop Ross carried a tally for Mychal Judge, the New York fire department chaplain who, after the planes had hit on 9/11, had rushed to the lobby of the Twin Towers to minister to rescuers, the injured and dying – and was himself killed there.

“It was privilege,” said Bishop Ross, “to carry Fr Judge’s tally with me. He’d lived and breathed the life of a fire department chaplain and he’d shown great courage.”

Bishop Ross says that some of the most poignant 9/11 images for him are of firefighters climbing the tower stairwells.

“On one side of the stair,” he recalls, “hundreds of people are streaming down the stair to evacuate. On the other side, crew after crew of firefighters are climbing to rescue people.”

For almost all those New York firefighters, they were climbing a stairway to heaven.

Photos courtesy of Jacquie Bay.