Up five flights of stairs at a dead run, Murray firefighter Jeff Ellis lugs a 50-pound roll of hose to the top, pulls another up by hand, then dashes back to the ground, touching every stair rung.

Despite Tuesday's cool rain, the practice course is no picnic. In Utah's hot summer temperatures - and the heat of a fire - it can be a killer.Clad in awkward breathing apparatus and turn-out gear weighing more than 50 pounds, Ellis doesn't finish with the stairs. Next, using a 9-pound shot hammer, he drives a steel I-beam 5 feet on a machine used to simulate forcible entry - punching a hole through a roof, wall or door.

With labored breathing, he walks more than 30 feet to a length of charged hose and drags it double that distance, dropping it only to pick up a dummy victim and pull it to safety.

All this in 2 minutes 33 seconds.

During a regional competition last week, he did it even faster, shaving 18 seconds off his practice time.

"He was taking it easy today," a teammate joked.

Nicknamed the "Cinderella" team at the regional Firefighter Combat Challenge in Spokane, Wash., last week, Ellis and four other Murray firefighters walked away with first place, beating out teams from Canada and the Pacific Northwest. It was Murray's first year participating in the combat, prompting disbelieving competitors from cities like Vancouver to ask, "Where is Murray, Utah?"

Ellis and teammates Capt. Brent Fullmer and firefighters Joseph Treadwell, Paul Krueger and Mike Estrada will compete against 19 other crews for the national championship later this month in St. Louis. On Tuesday, they practiced using the bungee tower at 49th Street Galleria in place of a five-story building and the adjacent parking lot for the hose-pull.

The course, consisting of five tasks, parallels what a firefighter faces in an actual emergency and is similar to the entrance exam required by many departments of new recruits.

"You can look at intensity that is this great (at a fire)," Treadwell said. "It is an absolutely grueling, tortuous event. If you're good at this, you're going to be good at the fire ground."

The gold-medal category typically requires completing the course in under five minutes. For most of the Murray team, they're trying to narrow their times closer to two minutes.

The Murray Fire Department also placed high in personal honors at the Spokane championship. Ellis took first place for best individual performance, with Estrada a close third. Together, the crew - which paid their own way to Spokane and will likely pick up the cost of the national competition themselves - won $6,000 worth of fire gear for the city.

Salt Lake City also sent a five-man team to the competition and placed sixth overall. Salt Lake firefighter Brad Naylor took first-place in the over-40 category. The Salt Lake team, sponsored by the University of Utah Medical Center, also attended on their own time.

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The Murray firefighters attri-bute much of their support to Fire Chief Lee Daugherty, who completed the course himself a few times.

"It's a reflection of the dedication of the team members," Daugherty said. "I think the other thing is it indicates there is a level of fitness in the Murray Fire Department that is above that of other departments."

"Sometimes, it's not the fastest guy that contributes the most," Treadwell said. Often it's a case of sheer will employed at a point when the firefighter is exhausted.

"It's very painful to watch guys go before you," Ellis said. "They pick up (the dummy) and drop it, pick it up and drop it - it's too painful to watch."

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