{"id":462175,"date":"2026-09-13T02:42:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T02:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/462175\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T02:42:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T02:42:18","slug":"first-ever-long-beach-9-11-memorial-stair-climb-offers-2200-steps-of-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/462175\/","title":{"rendered":"First-ever Long Beach 9\/11 Memorial Stair Climb offers 2,200 steps of support"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s 2001 and 16-year-old Charles Hakopian gets ready for school like any other day. He grabs a donut, picks up his girlfriend and heads to high school.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m standing in the room, got the TV on, it cuts out, I see the footage and I\u2019m just in shock,\u201d Hakopian said. What he saw was the South Tower of the World Trade Center getting hit on the news.<\/p>\n

Hakopian, now the Long Beach Fire Department (LBFD) captain for Fire Station 1, shared personal memories with attendees at the city\u2019s first-ever 9\/11 memorial stair climb Saturday morning. He reminisced on old photos of him wearing firefighter helmets and mentioned how, as a kid, he always had a curiosity about being a firefighter.<\/p>\n

That day, September 11, 2001, he remembers as the driving force for him to become a firefighter.<\/p>\n

Hakopian began reading books, seeing footage and watching videos of the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) responding to the attacks and became inspired to join the profession.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started asking myself the question: \u2018Why would they do that?\u2019 And learning about that, that completely threw me into becoming a fireman,\u201d he said. \u201cFrom 9\/11 on, that was just my drive and my passion.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Attendees of the first-ever Long Beach 9\/11 Memorial Stair Climb quickly become emotional after hearing the keynote speakers on Sept. 12, 2026 in Long Beach. (Samuel Chacko | Signal Tribune) <\/p>\n

\"\"The 9\/11 commemoration event brought a variety of people to play the bagpipes to honor fallen first responders lost on Sept. 12, 2026. (Samuel Chacko | Signal Tribune) <\/p>\n

Hakopian, LBFD firefighter Phil Hanlen, and close to 100 attendees came together Saturday at the Long Beach World Trade Center to honor the 343 firefighters and 2,977 victims who lost their lives to the 9\/11 attacks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hanlen, Hakopian and a few other firefighters visited the 9\/11 Memorial and Museum in New York<\/a> back in June.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cGoing to the museum, hearing the stories, seeing the faces \u2026 and then some of these stories are coming from family members, from their kids, so it\u2019s really hard, having kids [and] a wife,\u201d Hakopian said as his voice quivered with emotion. He also described going through five New York City firehouses and hearing stories from the first responders who were there on 9\/11, as well as family members who lost loved ones that day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The idea of a stair climb came almost two decades ago when both Hakopian and Hanlen joined the department.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To commemorate the 25th anniversary and educate people who don\u2019t have a living memory of 9\/11, Hakopian and Hanlen decided to host the stair climb this year<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to tell stories; we wanted for it to be a heavy moment. I think that trip really exposed us to raw things about that day. It\u2019s not just kind of brushing over some of the things, but actually watching it again,\u201d Hakopian said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Attendees of the first-ever Long Beach 9\/11 Memorial Stair Climb focus on the two small TV\u2019s they play a variety of videos during the 9\/11 attacks on Sept. 12, 2026 in Long Beach. (Samuel Chacko | Signal Tribune) <\/p>\n

\"\"Just before the Long Beach 9\/11 ceremony begins, audience members look at the various posters and information that fills the Long Beach World Trade Center on Sept. 12, 2026. (Samuel Chacko | Signal Tribune)<\/p>\n

The open-air event had photo posters plastered on the outer walls, along with memorandums, facts for the audience to read and videos of the 9\/11 attacks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Each attendee who signed up to climb the 22 stories had the name and photo of a firefighter who perished while responding to the attack clipped on their shirt as they pushed through each floor. The cards were supplied by the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, one of the event\u2019s two charitable beneficiaries alongside the FDNY Fire Family Transport Foundation.<\/p>\n

\"\"Around 100 members of the Long Beach 9\/11 ceremony participate in the city\u2019s first-ever 9\/11 memorial stair climb as they go all the way up to the 22nd floor of the Long Beach World Trade Center on Sept. 12, 2026. (Samuel Chacko | Signal Tribune)<\/p>\n

\"\"Participants at the Long Beach 9\/11 memorial stair climb and ceremony watch on the small TV screens as they play video of the attacks and of the news reports during that time on Sept. 12, 2026. (Samuel Chacko | Signal Tribune)<\/p>\n

Hakopian said these photos were meant to honor the fallen first responders, as well as motivate those climbing the flights of stairs should they get tired along the way.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you get from that is the motivation [that] they never stopped; they kept going,\u201d Hanlen said. \u201cWhen you think about these guys climbing up the Twin Towers, the biggest buildings you could possibly climb in the worst conditions, it gives you that boost of energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hanlen said the resilience the FDNY had as the attack unfolded set the standard for firefighters, due to the impossible nature of the situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like, \u2018Well, we might not be able to do anything for them when we get there. But we definitely can\u2019t do anything for them down here, so we climb and so we go.\u2019 And you can hear from the radio traffic that they are starting to get some water [on the fire], those sons of guns made it up there and started fighting the fire,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The LBFD captain stressed the importance of commemorating 9\/11 every year to learn from the past.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to learn from the past to go forward and the future \u2026 we have to learn about these things so that [they] can mold us and that could shape us to be better human beings for one another,\u201d Hakopian said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/a>\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s 2001 and 16-year-old Charles Hakopian gets ready for school like any other day. He grabs a donut,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[123228,182131,113940,131,14901,133,132],"class_list":["post-462175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-9-11","tag-9-11-stair-climb","tag-lbfd","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-fire-department","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}