[3][4] On September 11, 2001, Fire Fighter, along with the rest of the FDNY Marine Units, responded to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and took up a station at the foot of Albany Street in Battery Park City and began pumping at her maximum capacity to supply water to landside units fighting fires in the still-standing towers.

Following a shipyard period in 2003 to rebuild her worn-out engines, the Fire Fighter resumed her post and continued to respond to marine emergencies, including a gasoline barge explosion in Port Mobil, Staten Island, in February 2003, and to the ditching of US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River in 2009.

Transferred on that date to the ownership of the non-profit Fireboat Fire Fighter Museum, Fire Fighter is now operated by an all-volunteer group dedicated to preserving the historic fireboat in running condition as a museum ship, befitting her over 70 years of service to the people and mariners of New York City and New York Harbor.

Under the stewardship of the museum, Fire Fighter found a home in Greenport, New York, on Long Island's North Fork and relocated to the village from the Brooklyn Navy Yard in February 2013.

The museum was awarded a National Park Service Maritime Heritage Grant in 2014 to pursue hull upkeep and preventative maintenance shipyard work.