Purchase fire extinguishers, fire blankets, escape respirators, and first-aid kits, then inspect them once a year

26. Purchase fire extinguishers, fire blankets, escape respirators, and first-aid kits, then inspect them once a year

Cost: A set of fire extinguishers, fire blankets, one respirator per person, and a first-aid kit costs a few hundred yuan. You only need to buy it once; after that, it takes just 10 minutes each year to inspect the items.

In plain terms: Fire extinguishers, fire blankets, escape respirators, and first-aid kits are all included in the Emergency Management Department’s list of 11 essential items for household emergency preparedness. The whole set costs a few hundred yuan, and you only need to buy it once. Studies of home safety programs that included on-site guidance found these measures cut injury rates by roughly 25%.

Benefit: The Emergency Management Department’s “National Recommended List of Basic Household Emergency Supplies” contains 11 items in total. Among them, “fire extinguishers and fire blankets” are recommended for “putting out small fires at the initial stage”, and the list also notes that “fire blankets can be draped over the body to aid escape”. The “escape respirators” listed are “firefighting filtering self-rescue respirators designed for use during fire escapes”. “External medical supplies” refer to “hemostatic powder, adhesive bandages, gauze bandages, and other items used to treat wounds”. Cochrane analyzed 98 studies involving 2,605,044 participants in total. Home safety interventions lowered injury rates to an IRR of 0.89; the 95% confidence interval for this figure is 0.78 to 1.01. For interventions that included on-site guidance, injury rates dropped by around 25% (IRR 0.75, 95% CI 0.62 to 0.91).

Evidence grade: B

Sources: Ministry of Emergency Management of China (2020). Recommended Checklist for Basic Household Emergency Supplies. <https://www.mem.gov.cn/kp/shaq/202011/t20201129_372149.shtml>; Kendrick D et al. (2012). Home safety education and provision of safety equipment for injury prevention. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. <https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD005014.pub3>; (2025). , (), () . <https://www.wusheng.gov.cn/gasylbzj/c109568/zzzq/content/content_1988424970198126592.html>

Notes: This finding is somewhat controversial. The same Cochrane meta-analysis found that interventions that did not provide emergency supplies also lowered injury rates by roughly 20%. The original IRR for those interventions was 0.78, with a 95% confidence interval of 0.66 to 0.92. Providing emergency supplies alone did not yield better results than other measures. The main effect of these interventions comes from on-site education and home modifications, so the benefit of supplying emergency supplies is rated as “moderate” rather than “significant”. When buying fire extinguishers, look for the CCC certification mark; for pre-pressurized extinguishers, make sure the pressure gauge needle points to the green zone. Details on smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors are covered in section 3 of this chapter. Instructions for using tourniquets can be found in section 13, item 12. Guidance on how to select, store, and replace each item can be found in [docs/.md](../../docs/research/.md).