On September 12, 2001, while much of the world was still trying to understand the unimaginable destruction that had taken place in New York City the day before, Steve Buscemi did something that had little to do with Hollywood.
He went back to being a firefighter.
Before he became internationally known for films such as Reservoir Dogs, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and later television series such as The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire, Buscemi had worked for the New York City Fire Department. In the early 1980s, he served with Engine Company 55 in Lower Manhattan, in the Little Italy area. It was a job that gave him a deep connection to the people and culture of the FDNY and to a particular community of firefighters who regarded one another as family.
Buscemi eventually left the department to pursue acting. His career took him far from the firehouse. He became one of the most recognizable character actors of his generation, known for playing complicated, eccentric, vulnerable, and sometimes unsettling characters.
But on September 11, 2001, none of that mattered.
The attacks on the World Trade Center killed thousands of people and devastated the New York City Fire Department. Hundreds of firefighters, police officers, emergency medical workers, and other first responders rushed toward the disaster while millions of others were trying to escape it. Among those who did not come home were members of Engine 55.
For Buscemi, the tragedy was not something he could simply watch on television.
The following morning, he found his old firefighter equipment, including his turnout coat and helmet, and returned to the firehouse he had once called home. From there, he made his way to Ground Zero and asked his former colleagues if he could help.
For several days, the actor was no longer an actor. He was a former firefighter working alongside firefighters.
He dug through debris. He participated in bucket brigades. He worked long shifts in an environment that was physically exhausting and emotionally overwhelming. He searched through the ruins alongside men who had lost friends and colleagues, many of whom were still missing.
Buscemi would later say that he went there to help, but that the experience also helped him.
His story is powerful not because a celebrity went to Ground Zero, but because for those few days, celebrity was irrelevant. Buscemi returned to a community in which he had once belonged, and the people around him knew him primarily as one of their own.
Before Hollywood, There Was Engine 55
Steve Buscemi was born in Brooklyn and grew up in the New York metropolitan area. His father, a sanitation worker, encouraged his sons to pursue stable civil-service careers. In a personal essay for TIME, Buscemi recalled that his father told him and his brothers to take whatever civil-service examination was available when they turned 18.
Buscemi took the firefighter examination and eventually joined the FDNY.
CBS News reported that Buscemi began at Engine 55 in Lower Manhattan in 1981. Other accounts, including a detailed profile published by The New Yorker, place his arrival at Engine Company 55 around 1980. The sources therefore differ slightly on the precise starting year, but they agree on the essential fact: Buscemi spent approximately four years as an FDNY firefighter before leaving to pursue acting.
At first, the young Buscemi was not the confident, recognizable personality that audiences would later know.
He was a “probie”—a probationary firefighter—and, by his own description, he was quiet and intimidated by the culture of the firehouse. He was entering a profession built around teamwork, discipline, danger, and an unusually strong sense of camaraderie.
Over time, however, he became part of that brotherhood.
Buscemi was also pursuing acting during this period. He attended acting classes and performed outside the firehouse. His colleagues eventually learned that their quiet firefighter had another ambition: he wanted to become an actor.
The two worlds could coexist for a while, but eventually they became difficult to balance.
When Buscemi began receiving opportunities in film and theater, he decided to leave the FDNY. In CBS's account, his colleagues at Engine 55 were surprised by the decision. From their perspective, he was walking away from a secure career and a profession in which people traditionally expected to remain for life.
Buscemi, however, followed the path he had chosen.
His acting career gradually took off.
He appeared in independent films and eventually gained widespread recognition after playing Mr. Pink in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. From there, he developed a career that was unusual even by Hollywood standards. He became famous without fitting the traditional image of a leading man. His performances were often understated, vulnerable, strange, darkly comic, or emotionally unpredictable.
Yet despite his success, the years at Engine 55 remained part of him.
That became unmistakably clear seventeen years after he first entered the fire service.
September 11 Changed Everything
On September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes as part of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
Two aircraft were flown into the World Trade Center towers in Lower Manhattan. Another struck the Pentagon. A fourth crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to regain control of the aircraft.
In New York, firefighters responded immediately.
The scale of the disaster was almost impossible to comprehend. The collapse of the World Trade Center towers created an enormous debris field in Lower Manhattan. The FDNY suffered an unprecedented loss of personnel.
For Buscemi, the catastrophe was deeply personal.
He had spent years working in the same profession as the firefighters now rushing into the ruins. He knew what their work meant. He understood the culture of the firehouse. And he knew Engine 55.
In his 2021 essay for TIME, Buscemi described the powerful sense of connection he felt after the attacks. The next morning, he took his old firefighting gear and made his way toward the site. He eventually found his former company and asked whether he could join them.
CBS News reported that when Buscemi returned to Engine 55 on September 12, he learned that five firefighters from the company were missing. One of them was a close friend.
This detail helps explain why his decision was about much more than nostalgia.
He was not simply visiting an old workplace.
He was returning to a firehouse whose members had suffered an enormous loss.
Going Back to Work
At Ground Zero, Buscemi became one worker among thousands.
The scale of the recovery operation was extraordinary. Firefighters, police officers, construction workers, utility workers, volunteers, medical personnel, and others worked around the clock. The initial hope was to find survivors. As time passed, the operation increasingly became a search for human remains and the recovery of evidence.
Buscemi worked with firefighters in the search and recovery effort.
He participated in bucket brigades, in which lines of workers passed debris from one person to another. These operations were physically demanding and repetitive. Workers moved through enormous quantities of rubble by hand, searching carefully through a landscape where the normal geography of Lower Manhattan had disappeared.
The 9/11 Memorial Museum has documented the bucket brigades as an important part of the recovery operation. Firefighters and other workers formed human chains, manually passing buckets of debris as they searched the wreckage.
Buscemi later described Ground Zero as almost impossible to recognize.
In a CBS interview, he recalled that the site looked as though he were on another planet. The familiar streets and buildings were gone, and he had difficulty understanding exactly where he was.
That description is important because Buscemi knew Lower Manhattan.
He had worked there.
He had walked those streets as a firefighter.
He knew the firehouse, the neighborhood, and the city.
Yet the destruction was so complete that even someone with intimate knowledge of the area struggled to orient himself.
For several days, Buscemi worked alongside his former colleagues. CBS News reported that he spent about five days at Ground Zero. Buscemi himself later described working there for approximately five days before returning to his normal life.
The work was exhausting, but the emotional burden was perhaps even greater.
These were not simply ruins.
For the firefighters, the debris contained the remains of friends, fellow firefighters, civilians, and people they had attempted to save.
The operation was also taking place in dangerous conditions.
The Reality of Ground Zero
In the immediate aftermath of September 11, the full long-term health consequences of working at Ground Zero were not understood.
The air around the site contained enormous amounts of dust and pulverized building material. Workers were exposed to smoke, chemicals, asbestos, glass fibers, metals, and other hazardous substances.
At the time, however, many first responders believed that they were doing what was necessary and that the danger would eventually pass.
Years later, researchers documented serious health consequences among people who had worked at the World Trade Center site.
CBS News reported on research showing substantial respiratory problems among firefighters and other workers exposed to the dust. The FDNY's chief medical officer, Dr. David Prezant, studied changes in firefighters' lung function and found significant effects among those who had worked at Ground Zero.
The consequences were not limited to the first days or weeks.
Many first responders later developed respiratory illnesses and cancers associated with their exposure. Others experienced long-term psychological trauma.
This became part of Buscemi's own reflections on his time at Ground Zero.
In his 2021 interview with CBS News, he explained that although he had only been there for approximately five days, returning to ordinary life afterward was extremely difficult. He described experiencing depression, anxiety, and difficulty making even simple decisions. He also said that the events of September 11 remained emotionally present for him years later.