Olivia Quinn hadn’t been born yet when terrorists hijacked four passenger airplanes and crashed two of them into the World Trade Center towers in New York City 25 years ago today. 

But the high school senior and Whiting Volunteer Fire Department cadet can put herself in the shoes of the people who were there — especially those of Michael Cammarata, a 22-year-old firefighter who lost his life that day rescuing people from the burning towers. She stumbled on his name while researching the attack recently and realized he was only five years older than she is now. 

“I thought that, if I was in New York City at that time and I was that old, that easily could have been me,” she said. 

Today, Quinn is climbing the bleachers at Otter Valley Union Middle and High School 73 times, roughly equivalent to the 110 flights of stairs that firefighters faced in the Twin Towers on 9/11. Like them, she’ll be wearing 70-some pounds of turnout gear. She’s doing it to honor the 343 firefighters who died that day. 

“Doing the stairs, that’s like finishing the climb that they couldn’t finish because they went as far as they could,” she said. 

The crashes had damaged the elevators and most of the stairs in the two buildings, trapping around 2,000 people above the floors where the planes hit. Most did not survive, although many escaped from lower floors. 

Firefighters rushed into the buildings to help, but within two hours both towers had collapsed, killing many rescue workers still inside (a third building caught fire and collapsed later in the day). Another 453 FDNY firefighters have died in the years since from cancer and respiratory illnesses related to their work during the attack and its aftermath.

Quinn says her four years as a cadet firefighter has helped her feel connected to them. 

“You can ask a lot of firefighters, and they’ll tell you that firefighting is the brotherhood and the sisterhood, everyone is family. It doesn’t matter if you’re from one state or another, everyone is connected,” she said. 

For her, that’s true in a literal sense as well. Her father is assistant chief of the Whiting Volunteer Fire Department, and other relatives are also involved. It was her mother who suggested she do the memorial climb today. Similar climbs are taking place around the state and country through organizations such as the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. 

Quinn said she hopes her climb will remind people of the importance of looking out for one another. 

“Even though we lost 343 firefighters, plenty of us still carry on their legacy of caring for people and always doing what’s right,” she said.