San Francisco Firefighters say

The INside Box Bush Street Fire February 2010
32 Main Line www.sffdlocal798.org
The INside Box
Box#6346 579 Oxford Street, April 8, 2010
High-rise Climb
for Lung Association
Fundraiser
BY: Jaxon Van Derbeken
Christopher Mora-Posey could only watch last year as fellow San Francisco
firefighters scaled the 1,197 steps to the top of the former Bank of
America building on California Street to help raise money and awareness
about lung disease and asthma.
“I showed up in moral support,” the beefy 41-year-old San Francisco
firefighter recalled Saturday. He was lucky to even do that.
Mora-Posey was just out of San Francisco General Hospital, where he had
been in a coma for three weeks, his lungs having collapsed from severe
burns when his ventilator mask was jarred loose in an explosion at a
Portola district house fire Feb. 5, 2009. He also was treated for a torn
shoulder and other wounds.
On Saturday, after months of rehab and conditioning, he was back - not as
a supporter, but as a participant in the American Lung Association’s
fourth annual skyscraper stair climb. 1,200 climbers
He was among 50 San Francisco firefighters and 1,150 other
well-conditioned souls who clambered up 52 stories through the heart of
the former Bank of America building.
At the top, he enjoyed a celebratory bagel with his son, who made the
climb with him. Then he went back to the bottom and ran up again - this
time with a firefighters’ air tank on his back to add to the challenge. It
took him, he said, 17 minutes.
“Last year, I could barely make it up a few steps. This year, I made it up
over a thousand,” he said. “I’m satisfied - trust me. I envy people who
went up in full gear - that’s hard. It’s hard to go up without anything.”