In one direction, it understates his action by suggesting it was purely voluntary and unconnected to any prior obligation. But Buscemi did not go to Ground Zero as a private citizen with no connection to the situation; he went as a former member of Engine Company 55, whose current members were working in the pile and whose five members had died the previous day. In the culture he had been part of, going was not heroic; it was simply what you did. The word “heroism” makes the action seem more exceptional than it was in the context of the values that shaped it.
In the other direction, the heroism framing tends to inflate the action beyond its actual scale. Buscemi moved rubble for approximately five days. He did not rescue survivors. He did not perform acts of exceptional bravery in conditions of acute danger. He did demanding physical work alongside many other people in a difficult environment. This is significant and admirable; it is not, in any strict sense, heroic.
The most accurate framework for what Buscemi did at Ground Zero is probably the one embedded in the FDNY’s own culture: he showed up. Showing up, in the specific circumstances of his situation, required overcoming whatever personal difficulty attended being at a site of mass death and enormous destruction, putting on old gear and joining a working operation rather than remaining comfortable at a safe distance, and sustaining the work for five days rather than making a single gesture and leaving. These are real qualities — commitment, solidarity, persistence, the willingness to do unglamorous physical work in a difficult environment — that deserve acknowledgment on their own terms.