What do I do in the first minute of an emergency — a fire at night, a tornado warning, a rip current, a call for help?

Five pages in this library give steps for one of these moments. Close the bedroom door before you sleep is a house fire in the home you live in, and the door you shut at night. Go down and in when the tornado warning comes is the alert or the siren. The way out of a rip is sideways is the beach getting further away while you swim toward it. Say where you are first is the call for help itself. Find the second way out is a fire, smoke, an alarm or an attacker in a crowded place. Each page’s steps come first below, in its own words and order.

Close the bedroom doors before you go to sleep, and test your smoke alarm this week. Close the bedroom door before you sleep gives these steps. If there is a fire in your home: get out, stay out, and call for help once you are out — 911 in the United States, 999 or 112 in the UK, your local emergency number elsewhere. On the way, close doors behind you. Before you open a closed door, feel it and the handle with the back of your hand; if it is hot, or smoke is coming round it, keep it shut and use your other way out. Stay low, under the smoke. If you cannot get out, get into a room with a window, close the door, block the gap at the bottom with bedding or towels, open the window, and shout or wave a light-coloured cloth or a flashlight so you can be seen; if you can phone, tell them exactly which room you are in. Once you are out, do not go back in for belongings or pets; tell the firefighters who is still inside and where.

Many people on the page say the same thing about surviving a house fire, and it costs nothing: shut the door before you go to sleep. The fire services’ rule on going back in is no — once you are out, stay out; the London Fire Brigade puts it as never go back into the building. Some people explain why: going in blind makes you one more person for the firefighters to find, and some people, going on what firefighters say, call re-entry into a burning house suicide. The same people describe one exception, and it is theirs, not the fire services’: only if you can see the person clearly, and, one exchange adds, never into thick or black smoke. Without a clear sight of them, one person says, going in is fatal. What helps instead: bang on the doors and windows to wake people, call the emergency number, count everyone outside, and tell the firefighters the moment they arrive exactly who is missing and which room they sleep in.

When a tornado warning comes, go down and in: to the lowest floor, the room with the most walls between you and outside, away from windows, with your head covered. Go down and in when the tornado warning comes gives these steps. This is written for the United States, where tornado warnings are issued. When a warning covers where you are, act now rather than looking outside for it. Go to a basement, storm shelter or safe room if you have one; if not, the lowest floor, in a small room in the middle of the building with no windows — a closet, a bathroom, under the stairs, an inside hallway. Get under something sturdy or pull a mattress or blankets over you, and cover your head and neck with your arms. Do not open the windows. In a mobile home, leave for a sturdy building or shelter you picked in advance; a mobile home can turn over. In a car, drive to the nearest sturdy shelter if you can reach it; if you cannot, never stop under a bridge or overpass — either stay in the car with your seat belt on and your head down below the windows, or, if there is ground clearly lower than the road, get out and lie flat there with your head covered. Afterwards, keep away from fallen power lines, and if someone is hurt call 911 in the United States — 999 in the UK, your local emergency number elsewhere.

The pull when the alert goes off, the page says, is to go to the window and look for it, and then to work out which way to run; neither helps, and the second can kill you. On the window, the Storm Prediction Center’s words are that opening the windows is “absolutely useless, a waste of precious time, and can be very dangerous. Don’t do it.” A mobile home is the one home you leave, the page says, and the Storm Prediction Center’s advice is to get out even if it is tied down. Caught outside on foot, get into a ditch or any dip in the ground and lie flat, some people say, and the CDC gives the same advice; some people warn a ditch can flood fast in a storm, and one says do not lie under power lines.

If the water is carrying you away from the beach, do not swim straight back against it: swim sideways, along the shore, or float on your back and breathe until you can. The way out of a rip is sideways gives the short version before anything else. If the water is carrying you away from the beach, do not swim straight back against it. If you can still stand, wade out of it rather than swim. If you cannot, swim across the pull, along the line of the beach, and turn for the shore only when the pull has stopped. If you are tired or frightened, stop and float on your back first: head back, ears in the water, arms and legs spread, and breathe until your breathing settles. Then raise one arm and shout. A rip current carries you out; it does not pull you under. If you are on the sand and someone else is caught, do not swim out to them without something that floats: tell the lifeguard, throw them anything that floats, shout to them to float on their back, and call for help — 911 in the United States, 999 or 112 in the UK and ask for the Coastguard, and elsewhere your local emergency number.

The US and UK lifesaving advice, the page says, agree on the direction and differ on where to start. The US National Weather Service: relax, because rip currents do not pull you under. Do not swim against the current. Swim out of it — following the shoreline — and then in to shore at an angle. If you cannot get out, float or tread water. If you need help, yell or wave. The UK’s RNLI: do not swim against it, or you will get exhausted. Stay with your board if you have one, or float if you do not: tip your head back with your ears in the water, try to breathe normally, use your hands and legs to help you stay up, and do not worry if your legs sink. If you can stand, wade, do not swim. If you can, wade or swim parallel to the shore until you are free of the rip, then head for shore. And always raise your hand and shout for help.

The people on the page have the same argument, one person against one — swim sideways the moment you feel it, or float first and swim later — and the decider they give, the one to use, is how much energy you have and how strong the pull is. If you still have your breath and you swim well, swim across the pull now, at a pace you could keep up; one person warns that an all-out sprint sideways can exhaust you as surely as swimming for the beach. If you are tired, frightened, cold, or not a strong swimmer, float first, then swim across when you can. Go sideways until you no longer feel the pull, and only then angle in. If the water is cold, the first minute or so brings a gasp you cannot control; the RNLI says the first effects pass in less than a minute, so do not try to swim straight away: lean back, float, and control your breathing until it passes. If it is someone else in the water, the weather service says do not attempt a rescue on your own, and HM Coastguard tells people on the shore not to go into the water. Anyone who went under, or came out coughing or struggling to breathe, should see a doctor the same day, even if they feel fine.

When you call 911 or 999, say where you are first — and if you called by mistake, stay on the line and say so. Say where you are first gives these steps. If this is an emergency, call now: 911 in the United States, 999 in the UK, 112 from a mobile in the UK and across Europe, 000 in Australia, or your local emergency number elsewhere. Say where you are before anything else — the street and number, or the nearest crossroads or landmark, and the floor, flat or room. Then answer the questions in the order they are asked, and stay on the line until the call-taker tells you to hang up. If you cannot speak: in the United States, leave the line open and, where your area offers it, text 911; in the UK, on a mobile, speak if you can, even in a whisper; if not, cough or tap the keys when asked, and if you hear an automated police message, press 55 while it plays, because if you do not, the call is ended.

Many people on the page say give the address before the story, so help can be sent while the rest is being asked. In the UK, the first question on a 999 call is which service you need — police, fire, ambulance or coastguard — and then the location comes next; the page’s advice is to have the location ready as the first thing out of your mouth, and then answer what you are asked, in the order you are asked it. If you are alone and something is badly wrong — chest pain, a severe reaction, the feeling that you are going to faint — some people’s advice is to unlock the front door as you call, so the crew can get in. A paramedic there adds the limit: do not go out onto the steps or into the cold or heat to wait, because falling on the steps or lying out in the weather causes its own injuries. Unlock the door, then sit or lie down inside near it, not upstairs or in a far room. And if you called by mistake, stay on the line and say so: a call that hangs up looks, from the other end, like someone who was cut off — or stopped.

When you walk into a crowded place, find one exit that is not the door you came in by, and check that nothing is blocking it. Find the second way out gives these steps. If there is a fire, smoke or an alarm right now: leave by the nearest exit, which may not be the door you came in by. Leave your things, do not stop to film, and once you are out, stay out. Call 911 in the US or 999 in the UK — elsewhere, your local emergency number. If there is smoke, get low: US government fire guidance says to crawl under it to your exit. If the danger is an attacker, US and UK advice both begin with running if there is a safe way out: Run, Hide, Fight from the US agency CISA, which calls them options to weigh, and Run, Hide, Tell from UK counter-terrorism police. Call 911 or 999 when it is safe to.

On the page, many people make the same point: in a fire or a panic, a crowd heads for the way it came in, and the door jams. The US government investigated a nightclub fire in Rhode Island in 2003 in which 100 people died, and found that about two-thirds of the people inside tried to leave through the main entrance, and many could not. The building had other exits: doors by the stage, doors beside the bar, and a kitchen exit. In the moment, one person’s caution is not to simply follow the crowd, because it may be running into the jam or towards the danger.

Who these pages are not for. The fire page is for a house fire in the home you live in: in a block of flats or a high-rise, where the advice to leave or stay put depends on the building, follow your building’s fire plan and your local fire service; for wildfire or bushfire, your local fire authority’s plan, and one person stresses the part of it about leaving early; and anyone who breathed smoke or was burned needs medical care. If what you need is the fire in front of you right now, it says, stop reading and get out. If you live in a high-rise, or you or someone you care for cannot get to a lower floor quickly, the tornado page does not have your answer, and your local emergency management office is the place to ask what your building’s plan is. The page is not a substitute for your local warnings, drills and officials. Storm chasing, the people there say, is for trained professionals. The UK and Europe get tornadoes too, generally smaller, some people point out, and the indoor rule — low, inside, away from windows — does not change with the country. The rip page is for the swimmer; it is not a lifesaving course, and it does not teach rescue or first aid. It says that if you cannot swim well, “swim sideways” is not your plan: stay where you can stand, and if you are ever carried out anyway, the float and the raised hand are your whole job. In a river the rule is different: if you are swept into fast-moving water, the US National Park Service says do not try to stand up; lie on your back with your feet pointing downstream and your toes up at the surface, and use your feet to push off rocks, looking downstream. The call page does not replace your local emergency service’s own instructions, and it says that if it is not an emergency, this is the wrong number — in the UK, 101; in the United States, your police department’s non-emergency line, which some cities put on 311 — and the US association’s line is that if you are not sure whether it is an emergency, call 911 and let the call-taker decide. The exits page does not teach how to survive a crowd crush or a mosh pit, and it is written for people who never look; if you check every room and cannot stop, the habit may be part of the problem rather than the answer. One person warns that people who lean towards anxiety, or who find open or crowded places frightening, may find the practice harmful, and some people add that if the checking causes you distress or feels like something you have to do, it may be a sign of an anxiety disorder that treatment can help with.