What should every home have ready for an emergency?

A kit you can open with one hand, an extinguisher near the way out, a number a stranger can read from a moving car at night, and two things to know before the minute you need them. Five pages here, and the emergency number is on four of them.

A first-aid kit that is really three. The first-aid kit is three kits says the box in the cupboard with plasters that no longer stick was what its people had too, and what they built instead was a couple of plasters and a wipe on you, a proper box at home with wound supplies and your chosen medicines kept dry and in date, and a kit in the car built for a crash. Its safety line, from people who work in emergency care: a kit is not a course. The supplies for small cuts and burns are for everyone; the supplies for serious bleeding are for people who have been shown how. In any serious injury the first move is the emergency number, 911 in the US, 999 in the UK and your local number elsewhere, and the second is to do only what you have been trained to do: press hard on heavy bleeding, cool a burn under running water, keep the person still and warm. Three rules everyone there accepts: no aspirin for a stroke, no antihistamine in place of epinephrine for a severe allergic reaction, and no paracetamol on top of alcohol. Whether medicines belong in the box at all is argued there with both sides.

An extinguisher, and the judgement that goes with it. Give the fire extinguisher is about a housewarming present, and its safety line is the part to keep: read it as a judgement you make in the moment, not a rule, because the two fire services the page checked answer differently and both are there. The US Fire Administration allows a householder to use an extinguisher when the fire is small and contained to a single object, everyone has been alerted and the fire department called, you can operate it, you are safe from the smoke, and you have a clear way out behind you: pull, aim low at the base, squeeze, sweep. London Fire Brigade, for a pan fire specifically, says do not tackle it, do not move the pan, never throw water on it, turn off the heat only if safe, leave the room, close the door, warn others, call 999. The type is ABC, full size rather than the aerosol can that lasts fifteen to twenty seconds, kept in the kitchen near the way out rather than beside the stove, with a fire blanket beside it or instead of it, because a blanket never expires.

A house number the ambulance can find. Light the number comes from firefighters and paramedics who have spent minutes circling in the dark. Put your number where a stranger can read it from a moving car at night: big plain digits, reflective or lit, on the mailbox or at the road if the house sits back, with nothing grown over them. The test you can run tonight: if delivery drivers struggle to find your door, the crew new to your street at three in the morning will struggle worse. And the page’s line for the person alone with sudden symptoms: do not go outside to fix anything; stay on the phone, door unlocked, a light on.

Two things to know before the minute. If someone is being shocked, don’t grab them exists for one terrible minute: a person in contact with live current is part of the circuit, and the rescuer killed by the grab their instincts demanded is the classic tragedy. Cut the power, unplug or hit the breaker, which is why knowing your panel now is the real preparation; if you cannot, separate them with something dry that does not conduct, a wooden broom handle, a plastic chair, never anything metal or wet; call 911, 999 in the UK; and if they are unresponsive and not breathing, CPR. High voltage, a downed line, is different, absolutely and always: stay back at least twenty feet, farther if the lines are jumping or sparking, keep everyone else back, and let the professionals kill the power. Cause the scene is the other minute: a truly blocked airway takes your voice, so if you cannot cough or speak, bang the table, smash a plate, put both hands to your throat, and be unmissable; the choking person who walks politely to the bathroom removes themselves from everyone who could help. Its safety line is the Red Cross sequence: send someone to call, then alternate five firm back blows between the shoulder blades with five abdominal thrusts until the object comes out or they become unresponsive.

Who this is not for. The kit page says anyone hoping a kit stands in for a course, and one account there whose kit saved a life at a crash says so; a first-aid class puts it in your hands. Anyone stocking prescription drugs, which is a prescriber’s conversation. And anyone in a block numbered by management, for whom the number page says your own door still wants one.