Steve Buscemi reconnected with old fire company after 9/11 terrorist attacks

Actor Steve Buscemi was prompted to reconnect with his old New York firehouse company and produce a documentary about firefighters after losing some of his former colleagues in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Boardwalk Empire star became a New York City Firefighter in 1980 and worked for four years before leaving to pursue acting.
However, he returned to the job for a few days to help sift through the wreckage following the double attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
He says, “I was out like 15 years almost, but I knew on the day that it happened, when the reports came in of how many people were lost and the firefighters were lost… I went to my firehouse the next morning just to see if I could get a report, because it was hard to get any information.
“I learned they had lost five (team members), one of them… I had worked with, I found out there were other guys I had worked with, so I actually ended up going down to the site for a few days with my old company in my old gear. I looked sort of out of place because I had an old turnout coat and helmet, so it’s not that people recognised me there, they just thought like, ‘Who’s the old guy?'”
The experience also inspired him to produce a documentary titled A Good Job: Stories of the FDNY about the daily dangers firefighters face in their jobs.
He continues, “That reconnected me. I always say this, ‘I hate the reason I got reconnected, but I’m so grateful that’s a part of my life again.’
“(The documentary is) firefighters just telling their stories and me talking to them. Some of them I know and others I was just meeting for the first time and it just covers what they do on a day-to-day basis. Of course it deals with 9/11, but I didn’t want 9/11 to shadow the whole job because they’ve been dealing with awful stuff pre-9/11 and I wanted to hear those stories as well.”