Current Projects

More on the Paramedic Program and "Emergency!"

In 1969, Dr. J. Michael Criley and Dr. A James Lewis developed a paramedic training program at Los Angeles County's Harbor General Hospital. The first class consisted of six Los Angeles County firefighters, 12 Los Angeles City firefighters and 30 registered nurses. Training consisted of 1,000 hours of lectures and classroom study. 180 hours of clinical work and 480 hours of field internships. There also were other programs across the nation. But there was little coordinated effort to advance the program or to provide funding for training and equipment. The public in many of these cities and certainly those living elsewhere were unaware of what was happening.

Then came television, an entertainment medium. Universal Studios' Executive Producer Robert Cinader recognized the rare opportunity to entertain AND educate the public at the same time. He conceived the "Emergency!" TV series, a dramatized account of L.A. County Fire Department paramedics and their interaction with the medical staff of a major L.A. County hospital.

Cinader spent time at fire stations listening to "real stories from real people." He received support from L.A. County Fire Chief Richard Houts. In Thanksgiving Week of 1971, principal photography started on the two-hour world premier for Jack Webb's Mark VII Productions and Universal.

Seven years later, 129 one-hour episodes had been aired along with 7 two-hour Movies of the Week. A national audience that average 30 million people a week viewed them. Twenty two years after the last prime-time episode was broadcast on NBC, the series is still running on TV Land cable channel and drawing one million viewers a day, five days a week.

Actors Randolph Mantooth and Kevin Tighe were selected as the firefighter/paramedic "stars". Actors Mike Norell, Tim Donnelly and Marco Lopez and "real" fire department engineer Mike Stoker were cast as the rest of the Fire Station 51 crew. Actors Bob Fuller, Julie London, Bobby Troup and Ron Pinkard headed up the medical staff at fictional Rampart General Hospital. The Fire department and the Department of Hospitals provided technical advice and support to writers, directors and actors. The TV show produced one very startling result: agencies and individuals across the nation were asking: "is this real, or just TV?"

In 1971 when Emergency! first aired, there were only 12 paramedic rescue units in service throughout the U.S. Ten years later, half of all Americans were within 10 minutes of a paramedic squad. The program had another important impact. Thousands credit "Emergency1" with motivating them to become paramedics, doctors, nurses, medical technicians, firefighters or serve with rescue squads.

"Emergency!" was once just a TV series and emergency care once consisted of throwing a patient into a vehicle and rushing to a hospital with no definitive care along the way. Many patients arrived, but "dead on arrival." The world is a safer place today for those in medical distress not by accident, but because other people before cared about them and brought a dramatic and rapid change in our medical system.

Dr. Eugene Nagel best sums it up: "The dramatic series 'Emergency!' was responsible for spreading the word to the four corners of the United States, creating almost instant demand for the services viewed on the family TV set. I can't think that anything advanced emergency medicine in this country more than that program did."

Project 51 is a tribute not only to emergency medical technicians, hospitals personnel and firefighters from all over the world, but to the hundreds of thousand individuals whose lives have been saved by these heroic men and woman.