Rebecca Gourley Covington Maple Valley Reporter
Maple Valley, WA — Maple Valley Fire and Life Safety is planning to commemorate the heroism of the first responders during the September 11, 2001 tragedy in New York City by building a memorial outside of Fire Station 81.
Jennifer Szabo of Pacific Outdoor Living, an Issaquah based company, designed the memorial.
The centerpiece of the memorial is a piece of steel from the World Trade Center.
In 2013, Maple Valley Firefighter Ryan Carpenter wrote a letter to the commissioner of the New York Fire Department asking for a piece of the World Trade Center to display in a public memorial.
The request was approved and now Maple Valley Fire and Life Safety owns a piece of that history.
The design, which was presented before the City Council at Monday night’s meeting, is two pentagon-shaped columns with the piece of steel suspended in between. Two flood lights will be placed inside the columns to replicate the 9/11 memorial at ground zero in Manhattan.
There will also be a bench constructed on one side of the columns for people to sit.
Maple Valley Fire plans to have a ceremony on September 11, 2015 once construction is finished.
The cost of the project was estimated to be about $50,000. But, with the help of volunteers and firefighters pitching in to help, Deputy Chief David O’Brien said they got that cost down to about $25,000.
Maple Valley Fire is prepared to contribute up to $15,000 to fund the memorial, which leaves about $10,000 still needed.
A GoFundMe account was set up Tuesday morning to collect donations from the community to fund the rest of the project.
