Originally planned to shoot in North Carolina but relocated to South Africa for budgetary reasons. A lot of the cast members are local Africans.
The absence of lead character John Eriksson for several episodes is notably due to the fact that Dolph Lundgren had to leave the production for several weeks to film The Expendables 3 (2014) and travel back and forth between South Africa and Bulgaria. Lundgren's distancing from the project seems to have made the producers rewrite 'J.R. Martinez''s character the lead instead although J.R. appeared in 19 of the 20 episodes.
Developed and pre-sold as "Rescue 3", the show was renamed "SAF3" (pronounce "Safe") for Sea-Air-Fire. The number 3 in the title stands for the fact the rescue service has to save people from the sea, do rescues using helicopters and are firefighter rescuers all in one team.
Writers Jim Thomas and John Thomas from 'Predator' (1987) left the project after they were attached to write and executive-produce the show.