DENIS LEARY RESCUES NEW ORLEANS FIRE DEPARTMENT

Rescue Me star Denis Leary is still trying to help the devastated fire department in New Orleans.

This August it will be two years since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. In the wake of that devastation Rescue Me star Denis Leary is constantly fighting to rebuild the local fire departments that were destroyed.

At the premiere of season four Denis talks about the most recent headway the Leary Firefighters Foundation has made but stresses there is still much more work to be done.

“We just supplied New Orleans with 16 rescue boats which is hard to believe but none of the firehouses have rescue boats when Katrina hit. And we just rebuilt 11 out of 22 firehouses that need to be rebuilt down there. I just got a lot of help from Ellen Degeneres and the Frito Lay company; they gave me $150,000 to go to this one firehouse but I still need about another $1 million to rebuild the other 11 firehouses down there that need help so if anybody’s out there watching go to www.learyfirefighters.org and go to the Jerry Lucey fund part of the website and you can donate money that goes specifically to the New Orleans fire department.”

Rescue Me honors all firemen especially New York’s bravest, the FDNY. Denis says he continues to remember those who gave their lives on 9/11.

“Every so often I drop in the name of a real firefighter, a friend of mine who died on 9/11 which is sort of natural in the course of the conversation for these characters. So it’s always meaningful to hear the parents or the wives or the brothers and the sisters write us or call us and say, ‘thank you so much for keeping his name alive,’ so that’s one of the little side bars that we could do that makes you feel good.”

Season four of Rescue Me premieres June 12 at 10PM on FX.