The series was hosted by William Shatner and featured reenactments (and occasionally real footage) of emergencies that often involved calls to 911.

The idea for Rescue 911 was conceived in early 1989 by then-president of CBS Entertainment Kim LeMasters, when he heard a recording of a dramatic 911 call on Charles Osgood's radio show while driving to work.

[2] LeMasters initially suggested that Leonard Nimoy should host the show, but Shapiro felt William Shatner would be a better fit due to his role as a police officer on the TV series T. J.

[3] The first Rescue 911 special aired on April 18, 1989, and included a segment ("Arlington") featuring the 911 recording that had given LeMasters the idea for the show.

[citation needed] The original format was most recently shown in Ecuador on Oromar Televisión [es][4] and in Brazil on SBT and Canal Viva.

[5] The following networks have aired the show in the syndicated format: In October 2018, Variety announced that CBS Television Studios was developing a two-hour Rescue 911 reboot with William Shatner slated to return as host.

When reruns aired on The Family Channel, episodes were edited for running time, censored for profanity and negative religious references, and graphic footage was sometimes cut out.

Stories featured on syndicated episodes were often edited for running time, omitting short scenes that were shown in the original broadcasts.

Shatner would introduce episodes (and usually, all segments within them) from inside 911 dispatch centers or fire stations, or next to police cars and/or ambulances.

In addition, all segments included voiceover narration by Shatner, interview clips with the people involved and, in many cases, the actual recorded 911 call.

Many re-enactments required complex presentation, such as the recreation of house fires, automobile accidents, police chases, explosions, pregnant women in labor, and even natural disasters.

In these stories, the show's camera crews would ride along with paramedics, firefighters or police, or wait in hospitals and film whatever happened to unfold.

Each episode would end with Shatner making some variation of the following statement: "This series is dedicated to all the men, women, and children who answer our calls for help, and are there when we need them most.

"Crimes, automobile accidents, medical emergencies, fires, choking/asphyxiation, and miscellaneous injuries were the most common situations presented on the show.

These incidents included the New Year's Eve 1986 fire at Puerto Rico's DuPont Plaza Hotel, the 1987 Amtrak train wreck in Maryland, two segments on Hurricane Hugo, the June 1990 Ohio tornado, the Stuart murder case, the Salt Lake City Public Library hostage incident, and the Oklahoma City bombing.

Such occurrences became exceedingly rare later in Rescue 911's run, and usually occurred in documentary segments or in those reenacting multiple casualty incidents in which other victims survived.

Three weeks later, TF1 announced the broadcast of Les Marches de la gloire [fr], a similar show with Cabrol as host and produced by the same production company, Plaisance Films.

The Italian channel Rai 3 realized its version, called Ultimo Minuto [it]: it ran on Saturday evening, during the period of winter and spring, from 1993 until 1997.

The show ran for over 14 years, with the last episode broadcast on August 27, 2006, and from 1998 to 2001 also aired the offshoot Notruf täglich [de].

A Swedish version, entitled SOS – på liv och död, was originally broadcast on TV4 from 1993 to 1996 and was hosted by journalist Bengt Magnusson.

This version was hosted by firefighter Glenn Borgkvist [sv], also known as the lead singer of Brandsta City Släckers.

A British version called 999 (after the UK emergency telephone number) premiered in 1992 and ran on BBC One until 2003, hosted by journalist and newsreader Michael Buerk.

The other stories, taken from international versions of the show, were about a Belgian family trapped in a car hanging precariously from a high overpass, a Russian hostage crisis in which a terrorist held two women captive, an Austrian skier who fell into an underground glacier river, and a French mother who was forced to drop her two children 60 feet from a burning apartment to bystanders below (the latter segment is not included on some versions of the video).