Throughout these years, he maintained his connection to the FDNY and to the community of people affected by the September 11 aftermath. He did this in several documented ways.
In April 2003, he joined approximately fifty demonstrators outside New York City Hall to protest Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposal to close eight firehouses as part of a cost-cutting plan aimed at addressing a $3.4 billion budget deficit. Bloomberg had indicated that as many as thirty additional firehouses might close if the city did not receive state or federal aid. Buscemi called the proposal “a slap in the face” to firefighters who had lost colleagues in the attacks. He appeared in his own capacity as a former firefighter, not as a celebrity making a political gesture — or rather, he appeared as both, but the credibility of the protest claim rested on the former. He knew what these buildings meant because he had worked in one.
In 2012, after Superstorm Sandy devastated parts of the New York metropolitan area, Buscemi joined cleanup efforts in Breezy Point, the Queens neighborhood that had been particularly badly hit. Breezy Point was a close-knit community with a high concentration of FDNY and NYPD families; during Sandy, a fire had burned through parts of the neighborhood while floodwaters prevented adequate response. His appearance at the cleanup was consistent with a pattern: showing up to work, without announcement, when people he considered his own were in crisis.
In 2014, HBO aired A Good Job: Stories of the FDNY, a documentary directed by Liz Garbus and produced with Buscemi’s involvement — he served as a producer and appeared as a subject. The film, Garbus’s project drawn from more than eighty hours of footage accumulated over two years, covered firehouse life, the World Trade Center recovery work and its health consequences, the particular demands of the job, and the culture of a profession that Buscemi had inhabited and never fully left. He was made an Honorary Battalion Chief by the FDNY in 2014, a recognition that was simultaneously ceremonial and meaningful — the department acknowledging that whatever his formal status, his identification with the institution was real.