He was not there as a celebrity. He was not there in any formal role. He had not re-enlisted in the FDNY; he was not an incident commander; he was not directing the response. He was a man with firefighting experience who was willing to move debris alongside the people doing that work, and that is what he did.
An FDNY lieutenant named John Nolan later recalled looking up from the rubble and recognizing Buscemi, apparently in a moment of slightly incongruous clarity: “Man, that looks like that guy from Con Air.” The recollection is human and unremarkable in the best sense — in the middle of an overwhelming disaster, a specific detail of recognition breaks through. Con Air had been released in 1997. Buscemi had been one of its supporting characters, playing a serial killer with a laconic affect. The man digging rubble at Ground Zero on September 12, 2001 was the same person.
He described the experience, in his TIME account and in subsequent interviews, as something that helped him cope in the immediate term. Working was better than not working. Being present with people who were doing something was better than being absent and watching television. The connection he had felt on the night of September 11 — the pull toward the community that was suffering — was, in the physical reality of Ground Zero, a kind of anchor.
“I walked around for hours and then found my company, found Engine 55, working there,” he said in an interview years later. That sentence contains a significant amount of information. He walked for hours first, finding his way through a disaster site of unprecedented scale. Then he found the company, the specific unit he had served in for four years, still working. He joined them.