Emergency Services

"Emergency - which service do you require?"

Police, Firefighters, Emergency Medical Technicians/Paramedics (which often overlap with firefighters; in many areas the EMTs work for the Fire Department, and in many more the firefighters are EMTs/medics). In an emergency, they are the first to respond, as most emergencies are related to their jobs. Often overworked and underpaid, but still dedicated to their jobs. Got a real big public image boost, at least in the USA, after their selfless actions on 9/11.

Individually these groups (especially the police) are depicted often enough, but once in a while you get all three playing a major role, or at least their respective vehicles.

Note that this is not them as a Power Trio, as this is about the organizations, not a trio of people. Also takes into account locale-specific services like Coast Guard, Mountain Rescue, Cave Rescue, etc. Then there's the mercifully seldom heard of Nuclear Emergency...

Some characters need them enough to be Acquainted with Emergency Services.

Sometimes praised in fiction as The Real Heroes, but it's often lip service compared to how they are usually treated.

Frequently overlaps with Rescue shows.

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Examples

Police

• Look up the works listed on Police Procedural and Cop Show.
• 240-Robert, a Rescue show about the Los Angeles Country Sheriff's Department Emergency Services Detail.

Firefighters

• Fire Country
• Rescue Me.
• Backdraft.
• An Australian series called Fire
• Another Australian series Fireflies, about volunteer firefighters.
• A pinball table named Fire! (1987)
• Ladder 49
• London's Burning
• Fireman Sam
• The Smoke
• Station 19 (though it does also have a police officer for a main character and several surgeons)
• Victor, about a Littlest Cancer Patient kid who dreams of being a firefighter.

Paramedics and Firefighters

• Emergency!
• Trauma
• Casualty
• Chicago Fire

All Three

• Rescue 911
• Third Watch
• 9-1-1 features all three, plus the 911 dispatch workers who actually receive peoples' initial calls.
• The Grand Theft Auto games let you try out each of these in the secondary missions.
• The Autobots had quite a few whose vehicle form was an emergency vehicle.
  • As far as Transformers go, it's probably worth noting that the Generation 1 combiner team the Protectobots who form Defensor are made entirely up of these vehicles (Hot Spot - fire engine, Streetwise - police car, Groove - anoddly large police motorcycle, First Aid - ambulance, Blades - air ambulance), as does the main cast of Transformers: Animated (Optimus Prime - fire engine, Ratchet - ambulance, Prowl - police motorcycle, Bulkhead - police APC^note There's precedent for these in real life. Bulkhead looks military instead of police since olive green is his natural color, but in the pilot you can clearly see that the probes are scanning otherwise identical blue APCs that the police own., Bumblebee - undercover police car (as in, a civilian car equipped with a siren and possibly other gear)).
• So do the robots from the various Braves series (where the good robots are all various public service vehicles) which you probably just know of from GaoGaiGar. Unsurprisingly, both Braves and Transformers were based on toylines from the same company.
• Rescue Heroes was a cartoon based on a toyline that featured an elite team of emergency service members (and astronauts) who operated like superheroes, but focused entirely on rescuing people rather than fighting crime (oddly, that includes the police officers who were part of the team).
• The aptly named Emergency! series of videogames is centred around managing various emergency personnel to, well, solve emergencies. This often involves using two or all three of the emergency services. ^note  But seeing how the games are made in Germany, the later ones also feature the Technical Relief Services as a fourth faction which takes on the more high-profile engineering duties for the fire brigade.
• Super Sentai and Power Rangers occasionally have a season themed on emergency services:
  • The main example is Rescue Sentai GoGoFive/Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue, an emergency squad specifically equipped to rescue people from monster attacks.
  • Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger/Power Rangers S.P.D. and Keisatsu Sentai Patranger are the Police variant. As is Mirai Sentai Timeranger/Power Rangers Time Force, if you're willing to count Time Police.
  • Sets of emergency-based mecha also tend to appear in vehicle-themed series, including Gekisou Sentai Carranger/Power Rangers Turbo, GoGo Sentai Boukenger/Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, and Ressha Sentai ToQger. This also applies to the sister franchise Kamen Rider with Kamen Rider Drive, as Drive has some emergency vehicles among his car-themed powerups.
• There's also Tomica Hero Rescue Force and Tomica Hero Rescue Fire; the first skewed more to general allround rescue, while the latter was more oriented towards a firefighter theme.
• Mixels has the MCPD (Mixopolis City Police Department), MCFD (Mixopolis City Fire Department) and the Medix (doctors).

Others

• Five Minutes Of Silence, a Russian series about EMERCOM rescue professionals in the Russian republic of Karelia. The series focuses on Unit 42-21 under the command of the gruff and no-nonsense Major Sergei "Sayid" Gireyev. The unit also includes Senior Lieutenant Tatyana Belova (a paramedic, who is later revealed to be Gireyev's daughter), Captain Nikolai Petrov (whose teenage daughter is constantly getting into trouble), Aleksandr Grek (starts out as an arrogant trainee and a "golden boy" from Moscow with a general for an uncle, but is later promoted to lieutenant and chooses to return to the unit), Vladimir "Old Man" Bykov (a retired rescuer, working as the unit's cook and dog handler), and the Team Pet Bubble (a very smart Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever).
• The Guardian (2006), a film about the United States Coast Guard and their Aviation Survival Technician (AST) program.
• The Time-Space Administration Bureau's Disaster Relief Branch in Lyrical Nanoha that Subaru joins, whose duties include fire rescues and rescues at sea.
• Police Rescue, an Australian TV show about the Police Rescue Squad, which is currently a part of the NSW Police's State Protection Group as a rescue and anti-explosive unit.
• Rescue Special Ops, an Australian series about search and rescue professionals.

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