Despite the rain on Sunday, thousands participated in the 22nd annual Tunnel to Towers 5K Run & Walk.

“The energy is palpable here today,” said Frank Siller, CEO and chairman of the Tunnel to Towers Foundation. “This is the way that everyone’s looking at it; If these great heroes are willing to take a bullet for us, we could take a few raindrops for them to come out here and honor them and make sure that we never forget.”

Participants started in Red Hook and made their way through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel to lower Manhattan.

The route is the same one FDNY firefighter Stephen Siller took on Sept. 11, racing to the Twin Towers on foot with all his gear to help save lives.

First responders completed the 5K with their own gear in his honor.

“I’m thinking about when I was in seventh grade, when 9/11 happened and now I’m a full-fledged fireman,” said FDNY firefighter Kevin Davis after completing the 5K. “It’s an honor and a privilege to do this.”

“It’s sad, of course, because, you know, 22 years ago, my brother gave his life up by running through this tunnel, you know, with 60 pounds of gear on his back,” said Siller as he reflected on the event. “But through his last heroic final footsteps, the foundation was born from this.”

The foundation provides mortgage free homes to families of first responders around the country who are killed in the line of duty.

Among those at the 5K Sunday, were many recipients, like Jessica Edeburn, whose husband Dallas Edeburn, a sheriff’s deputy in Minnesota, died in the line of duty last year.  

“I was holding my baby and panicking about everything that was going to come and about six months after he passed, I got a call from the tower saying that they were getting on my mortgage,” said Edeburn.

The event honors all the lives lost because of the Sept. 11 attacks. Although it’s been 22 years, the impacts of that day are still present.

“I want everyone to remember that it’s not over yet, number one, because we just had the 343rd firefighter just died of 9/11 illness,” said Siller. “Why is that number so significant? It’s big, right? It’s a tremendous number. But it was the exact amount of firefighters that died on 9/11. So it’s a terrorist attack that keeps on taking lives.”

The organization’s mission continues, already having paid for over a thousand mortgages.

“When Tunnel to Towers called, it felt like he was taking care of me for the last time. And I know that he’s happy knowing that but it and I get the life that the two of us always dreamed we would have,” says Edeburn.