Denis Leary had just arrived at Manhattan’s Chelsea Piers, unloading his hockey equipment for an early game, when United Flight 175 slammed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center 25 years ago.
“They turned the rink into a morgue, and they lined up all the ambulances,” Leary, 69, recalled in an interview with The Post.
That devastating morning would eventually help shape one of Leary’s most recognizable projects: “Rescue Me,” the raw, politically incorrect FX dramedy centered on FDNY firefighters grappling with trauma, loss and survivor’s guilt in the aftermath of Sept. 11.
The Massachusetts-born actor and the pickup hockey crew from his production company had a direct view of the terror unfolding downtown, watching the catastrophe from the West Side Highway as New York City changed in real time.
Leary remembered seeing a seemingly endless stream of office workers, many covered in dust and bloodied by debris, making their way uptown for hours after the towers were hit.
“The sound of the buildings … it’s almost like it goes into your bones,” he said.
What Leary did not yet know was that his friend Garnet “Ace” Bailey, the former Boston Bruins player and hockey standout who had once skated alongside Wayne Gretzky with the Oilers in the World Hockey Association, was aboard United 175 after the plane departed Boston’s Logan Airport bound for Los Angeles.
“I knew I was going to hear about firefighter friends of mine from the FDNY that didn’t make it,” Leary said.
“But the next day, to hear that “Ace” Bailey had died in the thing as well, we were just like, ‘That is crazy.’ I mean, it’s insanity.”
Leary was already incredibly attached to New York’s Bravest.
His cousin and close friend Jeremiah Lucey was a Worcester, Mass., firefighter who was one of six responders killed in a warehouse blaze in the town in 1999 — and the actor remembered how his FDNY buddies came up and helped search the building’s ruins at the time.
“A lot of members of the FDNY who I was friends with had come up to help look for the bodies,” Leary recalled.
The actor launched the Leary Firefighters Foundation in 2000 — and then an early supporter, FDNY Lt. Tim Higgins, was killed in the 9/11 terror attack that murdered nearly 3,000 people that day – 343 of them FDNY, 23 NYPD and 37 Port Authority Police Department members.
Leary said he “pretty quickly” decided he wanted to turn the pain into a purpose.
“A lot of the guys I knew that had survived, I was spending time with them and in their firehouses as they were digging through The Pile in the fall right after 9/11,” he said. “We were witnessing the grief that they were going through.”
Leary would often be joined in the firehouses by writer Peter Tolan, who saw the carnage firsthand while filming another project in New Jersey.
The pair initially discussed a film concept about a firefighter killed in the line of duty – but one night during the aftermath, changed everything.
“It was literally in the blink of an eye. We went from watching a guy come up from downtown from The Pile — they had found a friend – a piece of a friend – and so he was just overwhelmed with grief. I mean, he could barely talk,” the actor said.
“Watching him trying to fight to talk in that firehouse kitchen was a very tough experience to watch. Maybe 20 minutes later…all of us were laughing about something.”
That’s when the lightbulb went off for the duo to create “Rescue Me.”
“We’re going to make a show where people are on the edge of their seat watching an action sequence involving fire,” Leary said, “And then the next minute they’re crying because they’re so sad, and then the minute after that, they’re laughing their asses off.”
The 2004 FX hit show launched around the plot line of Leary’s alcoholic firefighting character, Tommy Gavin, as he struggled to cope with the death of his FDNY cousin after only one of his fingers was found at Ground Zero.
It mixed tearjerking tragedy with take-no-prisoners humor.
“Rescue Me” and its seven-season run also greatly revolved around cathartic, comedic, often irreverent firehouse kitchen conversations among Gavin’s crew.
They notably involved John Scurti’s hilarious snack-loving Lt. “Lou” Ken Shea and Michael Lombardi’s sexually confused new, “probie” member Mike Silletti.
There also was Daniel Sunjata’s eventual 9/11 conspiracy theorist firefighter Franco Rivera and Steven Pasquale’s lovable idiot Sean Garrity, whose heartbreaking cancer diagnosis becomes on-screen musical theater.
Many scenes needed little to no Hollywood embellishment, thanks to the real-life stories that FDNY members and firefighting consultants gladly dished to the show’s creators.
“We had so much information on a daily basis, not just comedically, I’m talking about dramatically,” Leary said. “All the ideas for our fires came basically from experiences those guys had.”
Younger firefighters – many who were rapidly promoted because so many senior superiors were killed on 9/11 – saw the pilot before airing and loved its portrayal of raw firehouse behavior.
“They said, ‘You got it. You totally nailed it,’ ” Leary recalled.
As for the older officers, “I had one tell me, ‘You’re giving away our secrets.’ ”
It didn’t take long for the crew to realize “Rescue Me” also struck a chord outside the firehouses – especially while filming early seasons in first-responder-heavy areas of outer Queens such as the Rockaways.
“We were shooting on blocks and in houses where every block had lost somebody,” Scurti told The Post.
“People were out in their lawn chairs with a bottle of wine, watching us shoot all night. That’s when I remember getting a lot of real families and real widows saying that they loved the show and that you’re putting such a great light on the New York City Fire Department.”
Scurti wrote four episodes and said the source material of everyday New Yorkers wanting to share their tales was everywhere after 2001.
“You walk into a deli, and you come out with another great 9/11 story that maybe we want to tell,” he said.
The show’s legacy – and healing power – is still reaching new New Yorkers over 20 years later.
Scurti recalled being stopped in a parking lot by a former detective late last month to be told thank you.
“He and his son discovered ‘Rescue Me,’ and they’ve been sitting in front of the TV for the past two weeks,” the actor said.
Leary’s foundation continues to help firefighters too, especially during a yearly charity event at an FDNY academy “where people pay big money to become a firefighter for a day.”
“I still get firefighters, a lot of first responders and military people, who talk about how the show helped them through or how they still go back and watch the show because it helps them to still process it,” Leary said.
