Genoa Firefighters Climb For A Cure

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor


If the aver­age per­son would put on a firefighter’s turnout gear, com­plete with Self-Contained Breath­ing Appa­ra­tus, hel­met and face mask he or she would find it dif­fi­cult to take a dozen steps, let alone a dozen steps up stairs.

Of course, fire­fight­ers have to be in supe­rior phys­i­cal con­di­tion to do the jobs they do while wear­ing the gear they wear, so when fire­fight­ers hold a fundrais­ing events it demands sta­mina that’s above aver­age — way above.

On Feb­ru­ary 23, Genoa Town­ship Fire Depart­ment fire­fight­ers par­tic­i­pated in the Cys­tic Fibro­sis Foun­da­tion, Cen­tral Ohio Chap­ter, Bat­tle of the Badges — Climb For A Cure at the Rhodes Office Tower in down­town Colum­bus. Climb For A Cure is a 40-floor stair climb at the Rhodes Tower done in full turn out gear while breath­ing air from an SCBA.

“We had our high­est par­tic­i­pa­tion this year, a total of 19 Genoa Town­ship fire­fight­ers took part in the stair climb,” said Genoa Fire Chief Gary Hon­ey­cutt. “We believe that we had the high­est par­tic­i­pa­tion of any depart­ment at the event.”

Hon­ey­cutt said the Genoa Town­ship Fire Depart­ment had four 4-person teams at Climb For A Cure, one 2-person team, and one solo climber that com­bined raised $1,100.

Cys­tic fibro­sis is an inher­ited chronic dis­ease that affects the lungs and diges­tive sys­tem of about 30,000 chil­dren and adults in the United States, 70,000 world­wide. Since 1955, the Cys­tic Fibro­sis Foun­da­tion has been the dri­ving force behind the pur­suit of a cure.

For addi­tional infor­ma­tion about Cys­tic Fibro­sis, and the Cys­tic Fibro­sis Foun­da­tion go to < cff.org >.

For addi­tional infor­ma­tion about the Genoa Town­ship Fire Depart­ment go < genoatwp.com > and click Fire.

Posted by Gary Henery on Mar 20 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.