The Real Firefighters on Set of the Hit TV Show “9-1-1”

The heart-pounding action pumping up the volume on the highly rated TV series “9-1-1,” starring Angela Bassett, Peter Krause, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Kenneth Choi, sweeps fans into the exciting world of firefighting. The pride and professionalism on screen are designed to pay honor and tribute to the real-life firefighters and police officers serving the city of Los Angeles off-screen.

Getting the nail-biting drama of life and death 9-1-1 emergency calls as close to the real thing as possible, with, of course, a dose of Hollywood tossed in, is at the heart of the production. A team of retired LAFD firefighters lends their time, talent, and expertise to the show to make the series one of the most popular and wild rides on air.  Watch as they take you behind the scenes of one of the best firefighter shows ever made.

Behind the Scenes of “9-1-1”: Reel vs. Real 

Whether the characters on “9-1-1” are responding to a deadly train wreck or a catastrophic earthquake, making the action and stories realistic is one of the marching orders taken on by Retired LAFD Battalion Chief Michael Bowman, the show’s technical advisor. “It was unique because they wanted it all encompassing, from script development to storylines to emergencies. And, authentic, everything from art direction to development of apparatus and equipment,” he says. Even the equipment purchased for the show is high caliber.

And, when you see the extras in the background of scenes, many are real career firefighters. Especially, if the action involves tools and techniques. “Any type of firefighting deployment of equipment or emergencies, advancement of hose lines, climbing of ladders, doing specific evolutions…with forceable entry and manipulation of all our tools, then we hire our real LAFD firefighters,” Michael says.

Several story lines for various episodes over the six seasons and counting came directly from the firefighters’ real-life experiences. “I’ll give you an example,” Michael says. “I told them one time, because I had a flashover in an apartment complex, I was forced to jump from one fire escape to another fire escape because a fire blew out the window. And, so, they just thought that was awesome, real life. Well, when they wrote the episode, we had our stars, Buck and Eddie’s characters have to jump from one building to another. So, they used the Rosslyn Hotel in downtown Los Angeles because they had enough room where it was realistic, where they could jump from one to there. So, they’ll use that and they’ll just build on it a little bit for television.”

 

The heart-pounding action pumping up the volume on the highly rated TV series “9-1-1,” starring Angela Bassett, Peter Krause, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Kenneth Choi, sweeps fans into the exciting world of firefighting. The pride and professionalism on screen are designed to pay honor and tribute to the real-life firefighters and police officers serving the…