Firefighters prepare for annual memorial ceremony in Colorado Springs
More than 7,000 firefighters and their families from across North America are in Colorado Springs for Saturday’s 32nd annual Fallen Firefighter Memorial ceremony.
The ceremony, starting in Memorial Park at 11 a.m., honors firefighters who died in the line of duty or from illnesses contracted during duty.
Organizers said a record 271 names will be added to the park’s memorial wall, and the event will be the third-largest in its history.
On a hot day Friday, drummers, bagpipers and flag bearers rehearsed for Saturday. More warm weather is expected for the weekend.
“This will be the third-largest event since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and when we reconfigured the memorial in 2015,” said Chris Jones, an event spokesman. “We’re asking everyone to arrive early. We’re adding more than twice as many names as we normally do, so the ceremony will last longer than usual.”
A steady stream of family members visited the memorial Friday, tracing the names of the fallen on paper and leaving flowers, photos or personal notes.
Among the first-time visitors are Seth and Payton Livengood, whose father was an Iowa firefighter.
“He died from of suicide after a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress syndrome,” Seth Livengood said. “We’re using his death to celebrate his life but we’re also trying to change the culture of mental health in the firefighting community.”
Danette Lenderman and her sister, Lisa Pringer, came from Texas to honor their father, a firefighter who died of cancer after his retirement.
“We hadn’t known about this memorial,” Lenderman said. “We were contacted through Facebook and that’s how we found out. Someone was looking for our dad’s family so that we could come to the memorial.”
Pringer said she and her sister literally grew up at their father’s fire station.
“He died in 2003,” she said. “Six months after he retired. We were always worried about him being burned. So Saturday will very emotional and memorable for us.”
Jones said modern firefighters use breathing and safety equipment more often than firefighters in the past but it hasn’t resulted in a decrease in nontraditional line-of-duty deaths.
“What we used to refer to as eating smoke isn’t the macho thing it used to be,” he said. “But the irony is even though we’re more careful, the substances we’re exposed to are more toxic because of plastics and other materials in products nowadays.”
On Friday at 7 p.m., drummers and bagpipers planned a public performance in downtown Colorado Springs.
On Saturday at 10 a.m., a caravan of fire vehicles will depart from University Village on North Nevada Avenue in Colorado Springs and arrive at Memorial Park just before the 11 a.m. ceremony.
