Rescue 911

"911, do you have an emergency?"

Rescue 911 was a TV show that re-enacted true stories of people involved in emergency medical situations--it showed how the situation occurred, what happened, how other people helped, how emergency services got involved, and the aftermath of what happened.

The show aired from 1989 to 1996, and took its material from late 1980s and early 1990s cases. There was also a special subseries called "200 Lives Saved" which featured people who spoke of how the things they learned from the show helped them save other people's lives.

Each episode consisted of a few segments, each its own story. Each segment started with people going about their daily lives, then some person(s) becoming involved in some situation that caused a medical emergency, and then people responding to it, and then emergency services (police/fire/medical) responding, and then maybe a few scenes from the hospital, and finally some scenes from what life was like some time later. The vast majority of stories involved some sort of serious physical injury or other life-threatening situation, although the vast majority of stories (though not all!) also have survivors (unlike real-life cases). And there are a few that don't involve any injuries at all but have various unusual situations.

It was hosted by William Shatner.

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This show contains examples of:

• Adult Fear: Your kid could get struck by lightning, get run over by a school bus, drown, hide from dangerous burglars, fall out of a multistory building, choke on something, get burned, get electrocuted, get shot...pleasant dreams!
  • And don't forget how if a kid doesn't get hurt, s/he has to watch an adult or another kid being hurt, and they can't do almost anything about it but call 911 and wait. The mere idea of having a kid subjected to trauma like that is freaking scary for adults.
• Bittersweet Ending: Sometimes they walk away with damage or even worse but a greater tragedy was averted.
  • In "Runaway Boxcars," the officer managed to prevent a much bigger accident, but one of the two people in the car died.
  • The episode with the crocodile in Africa. The victim walks away with permanent arm damage...and the dad lost his arm.
  • "Sealant Overdose": The good news? They saved the patient. The bad news? He has brain damage.
  • "Scuba Cave": Two out of the three divers make it out. One of them even manages to climb out of the water himself.
• Body Horror: "Baby Bathtub Burn". You'll never look at hot water the same again.
  • Any of the burns. There's one where hot grease is spilled on a baby and the grandmother gets burns on her hands, too.
• Downer Ending: This is mostly averted because the victims acted the right way and emergency services came in time, but unfortunately there were a few episodes where people actually died.
  • This was notable in "Butane Huffing," where a teenager collapses and dies after huffing butane to get high, which was ostensibly produced to make the point that Inhalant Abuse Is Bad.
• Driven to Suicide: "Suicide Save," "911 Suicide Save," and "Suicidal Caller".
• Drugs Are Bad: "Sealant Overdose" and "Butane Huffing" specifically mention inhalants. The show also had a couple of drunk-driving cases, and pointed out that it's the drunk-driving that's bad.
  • There was also one about binge-drinking, but it was pointed out that the binge drinking was bad.
• Eagleland Osmosis: Australian viewers were reminded to call 000.
  • In New Zealand, despite showing a disclaimer that 111 is their emergency call number, the show still had to be re-titled Rescue 111 in New Zealand shortly after, then simply Rescue in its final years.
• Emergency Services
• Eye Scream: "Chemistry Hero."
• Fire-Forged Friends: It's not uncommon for strangers to become friends over the rescues.
• Freudian Excuse: The girl in "Glass Bottle" never drinks from a bottle because of her traumatic experience with the bottle.
  • It's been mentioned that the kid whose tongue got frozen to the freezer stays the hell away from the icebox in real life because of what happened.
• Happy Ending: Aside from a few exceptions, Rescue 911 featured these. Justified in that the point of the show was to show how the response causes a happy ending.
• Humiliation Conga: A Real Life example happened to the titular crook from "Chimney Trapped Crook." First, he got stuck in the fireplace after trying to break in through the chimney. Then the homeowners called the police, who showed up and had a good laugh. Then a fire/rescue crew showed up, and they all had a good laugh. Then the homeowners started taking some pictures to send to friends and family, further adding to the humiliation. Then, after spending half the night upside down, he is freed from the chimney--only to get tackled by some cops and firemen, arrested, and (later) sentenced. THEN some producers made an episode of Rescue 911 about it...
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Though popular in its own right, this show has yet to see an official DVD release (likely due to the true stories involved). However, that hasn't stopped two YouTubers from posting various episodes on YouTube.
  • The show did get a VHS release in 1997 as Rescue 911: World's Greatest Rescues; however, it is edited together with international stories and a new narrator.
• Kid Hero: Quite a few. They even produced a special about it.
• Licensed Game: It's quite surprising that they could make a derivative videogame of this series, but they did, and it's a Pinball game. Apparently, said game even averts The Problem with Licensed Games, though it's pretty much impossible to screw up Pinball.
• Poe's Law/Reality Is Unrealistic: A few times, people assume that the victims are joking. This is discussed in "Send in the Clowns," where a clown's reaction to cardiac arrest is mistaken for a comedy act.
• Rousseau Was Right/Taught by Television: Many more lives were saved thanks to this show. A couple episodes of the show have actually had people mention that they had watched Rescue 911.
  • In "Wrong Number Rescue," a couple of kids call a wrong number by mistake. On the other line is an old man who is wheezing and saying he can't catch his breath, so they call an ambulance after finding out where he lives.
  • Within the show itself, it's surprising how many times a random person saves a complete stranger.
• Society Marches On: In a few episodes, callers didn't have a 911 service, so they called a specific number for a police or fire department. The show's popularity actually coincided with the adoption of the 911 emergency service in the U.S. and Canada, and certainly helped spread public consciousness about it.
  • This was notable in "Wrong Number Rescue," where the girls had to look up the emergency numbers, since they lived in a town that was too small for a 911 service.
• Technology Marches On: A few examples:
  • "911 Under the Bed" featured the victim going for a rotary phone, before grabbing a digital phone to save time on dialing. It's worth noting that cell phones existed at the time of the segment, but the only available models were expensive and bulky.
    • You actually can see these sometimes. An episode about killer bees shows just how bulky those old cell phones were.
  • A few episodes showed garage doors trapping people underneath them. In those cases, the houses had to have been built in the 1980s or before, when garage doors were much more dangerous because they lacked sensors and would keep descending no matter what (or who) was underneath.
  • With episodes dealing with carbon monoxide poisoning, one might wonder why the victims didn't have CO-detectors. Common carbon monoxide detectors at the time tended to be pads that would turn brown or black when CO was present. Audible alarms didn't become commonplace until the 1990s, after carbon monoxide deaths had increased.
  • The scenario in "Freezer Tongue" might be more difficult today, since a lot of refrigerators have freezers on the bottom or on the side.
  • Every so often, you might see an episode that shows a child playing a Nintendo Entertainment System or Sega Genesis.
  • Another episode had a five-year-old girl call 911 after coming home and finding the house completely empty. What had happened was a case of communication failure: the girl normally took a bus to another school where she was picked up by her mother; however, on that particular day she was instead taken straight home by a friend's parents, and her mother was at the other school looking for her. Naturally, with the prevalence of cell phones today, such a scenario may seem antiquated to the modern viewer.
• Truth in Television: Some people on YouTube who were in the show have actually left comments about it.
  • Some of the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning actually mirror the flu--a common pattern was that the family poisoned by CO thought that they were coming down with something.
• Where Are They Now? Epilogue: Nearly always done at the end of a segment. Usually, Rescue 911 filmed the segment's protagonists walking along a beach or walkway, visiting a fun center or public park, or other somesuch. The show also liked to film the protagonists meeting back up with the dispatchers and/or other personnel that rendered assistance.
  • If their segment is posted on YouTube, then sometimes the people involved (or those who know them) will post a comment, saying what they're up to today.