Firefighter Stairclimb Champ Set to Defend Title

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MELISSA BLOCK, host:

This weekend in Seattle some 1,300 firefighters will load up with about 70 pounds of gear a piece, and they'll each set out to climb 69 flights of stairs - 1,311 steps - up to the observation deck of the Columbia Center downtown.

It's the 16th annual Scott Firefighter Stairclimb to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. And the defending champion is 27-year-old Brent Molsberry, who volunteers with the Chukanut Fire Department near Bellingham, Washington. Mr. Molsberry, you're going for a repeat?

Mr. BRENT MOLSBERRY (Firefighter, Chukanut Fire Department): I would definitely like that.

BLOCK: And I gather it would actually be a five-peat for you. You've won this thing four times before.

Mr. MOLSBERRY: That's correct.

BLOCK: Well, what's your secret?

Mr. MOLSBERRY: Well, I figure the sooner I get up, the sooner the pain will stop.

BLOCK: And your time last year to climb all 69 flights was 11 minutes 17 seconds.

Mr. MOLSBERRY: Yeah.

BLOCK: Personal best?

Mr. MOLSBERRY: I was actually a couple of seconds slower than the year before.

BLOCK: That sounds awfully fast. I'm trying to imagine 69 flights.

Mr. MOLSBERRY: It's a long race.

BLOCK: Give us a picture here. You're climbing, wearing full bunker gear, mask, all that stuff.

Mr. MOLSBERRY: That's correct.

BLOCK: And how does the breathing part go?

Mr. MOLSBERRY: We breathe through a mask and have a compressed air bottle on our back. So it's sort of like a scuba system, except you're not underwater so it's just an S-C-B-A, which is self-contained breathing apparatus.

BLOCK: Does it feel like 11 minutes when you're doing it?

Mr. MOLSBERRY: No, it feels a lot longer.

BLOCK: Really?

Mr. MOLSBERRY: Yeah. It seems to drag on. You start getting a little tired. You look at the floor number and you're like, oh great. I'm only on floor 10.

BLOCK: Oh, you're watching as your going up. You're watching…

Mr. MOLSBERRY: Yeah. You can see the numbers, and so you can kind of try to distract yourself by trying to do math as you're going up, try to figure out how many floors you have left.

BLOCK: Is this climb anything close to what you have to do as a firefighter?

Mr. MOLSBERRY: Well, my department is a - we're just kind of a rural home tier department. We don't have anything that's quite that large, by any means. But city structure firefighters, they have to go up large skyscrapers, so that part is somewhat correct.

BLOCK: Does anybody get sick doing this?

Mr. MOLSBERRY: Yeah. It definitely happens. They have paramedics and volunteers every about 10 floors or so. And everybody going up is a fire fighters, so they, you know, if somebody is having trouble in front of you, they definitely, you know, everybody helps each other out.

BLOCK: Well, I guess, your competitors would have to be hoping that you wouldn't be there this year, but you are going to be there. So maybe they just have to hope you're going to have a bad day.

Mr. MOLSBERRY: Which could definitely happen.

BLOCK: What does it depend on?

Mr. MOLSBERRY: It depends on how you feel and, you know, how your pacing goes. There was one year where I maybe went a little too hard, and I kind of I guess overheated. Don't really remember the last 10 floors and kind of staggered across the finish and then collapsed, and ended up having to go to the emergency room.

BLOCK: Wow.

Mr. MOLSBERRY: IVs put in me because I was super dehydrated.

BLOCK: What is it like as you're heading up to the last, I don't know, 10 or so flights of stairs?

Mr. MOLSBERRY: Relief. Very excited to get done, because at that point your air bottle is getting pretty low, so it's getting even harder to bring the air out of it. You tend to get - you're really hot by that point as well, so you just can't wait to cross the finish line and take all that gear off and start breathing regular air again.

BLOCK: Mr. Molsberry, once you're all done, how do you get back down?

Mr. MOLSBERRY: We do get to take the elevator, thankfully.

BLOCK: You do?

Mr. MOLSBERRY: It's a great feeling when you get to climb to that elevator.

BLOCK: Well, Brent Molsberry, best of all to you on Sunday.

Mr. MOLSBERRY: Thank you very much.

BLOCK: And let us know how you do.

Mr. MOLSBERRY: I will do that.

Brent Molsberry will defend his title as the reigning champ of the Scott Firefighter Stairclimb. He volunteers with the Chukanut Fire Department, near Bellingham, Washington.

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

I'm Michele Norris.

BLOCK: And I'm Melissa Block. You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.

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