It’s not hard to see the difference a year has made to the BC Lung Association’s Climb the Wall fundraiser – all you have to do is look at the Burnaby Fire Department’s 2020 photos.
They show a sea of smiling, maskless firefighters squeezed in close together for a photo before they raced up 48 flights of stairs at Vancouver’s Sheraton Wall Centre to beat out other B.C. fire departments and raise money to combat lung diseases.
Since 2006, a team of local firefighters has trained each year to take part, but COVID-19 threw a wrench in the event this year.
Instead of squeezing into the Wall Centre to compete, about 170 firefighters on 16 teams from around the province participated virtually, counting steps for the month of February via an app connected to their Apple watches, Garmins and Fitbits.
But on the last day of the challenge yesterday, the Burnaby team also set itself an extra challenge as a send-off for the team’s founder, Captain Brad Mars, who put the first Burnaby team together in 2006.
“This was his last year doing it because he’s retiring this year,” team captain Noel Nacauili told the NOW, “so he wanted to do something where we all got out in our gear, on air and climbed a hill somewhere.”
The hill they picked is one of Burnaby’s steepest – Royal Oak Avenue.
In the end, the 10-member Burnaby Fire Department team took first place in the team category with 6,811,723 steps for a daily average of 17,185 per person.
Firefighter Adam Brown won the individual challenge with 859,554 steps, deputy fire Chief Darcey O’Riordan came in third with 772,178 steps and Nacauili came in fifth with 643,061.
Local firefighters really stepped it up for the last week, some logging daily averages between 25,000 and 29,000 steps.
But O’Riordan (the team’s second oldest member) blew them all out of the water on the last day – logging 42,885 steps.
It was the third-highest daily total logged by a firefighter in February, according to BC Lung Association events and engagement manager Marissa McFadyen.
O’Riordan said he went for a run in the morning, took part in the Royal Oak climb and then went for another run at about 7 p.m.
“But I had a nap in the middle; I’ll tell you that,” he said with a laugh. “I was just trying to contribute to the team, and I had some extra time.”
For O’Riordan, this year’s run is more about Mars and his work keeping the local Climb the Wall team going.
“Sometimes it’s been down to three, four members, and last year we had an all-time high of 29,” O’Riordan said, “but Brad’s been there every year, which is amazing. And he’s quite the motivator; he was on all of us all month long.”
Fundraising was down significantly this year, according to Nacauili.
Last year the team raised just over $15,000, but this year’s total was just $3,000, he said.
“We wanted to support the BC Lung Association as much as we could, but, at the same time, we found it hard to ask people to donate during these tough times right now. We all just kind of donated what we could, and a lot of our families and friends just helped us out.”
Follow Cornelia Naylor on Twitter @CorNaylor
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