Prepare a fire extinguisher, fire blanket, escape respirators and first-aid kit; check them yearly

Cost: The source estimates several hundred yuan for an extinguisher, blanket, an escape respirator for each person and a first-aid kit. Buy once and spend around ten minutes checking them each year.

In plain language: These items appear in China's Ministry of Emergency Management list of 11 basic household emergency supplies. Studies of home safety visits reported an approximately one-quarter lower injury rate; this does not establish that buying equipment alone produces that benefit.

Findings reported by the source: The ministry's list describes extinguishers and blankets for early-stage fires, fire blankets as coverings during escape, filtering self-rescue respirators for fire escape, and topical supplies such as haemostatic powder, dressings and gauze for wounds. A Cochrane review combined 98 studies and 2,605,044 participants. The injury incidence rate ratio for home safety interventions was 0.89 (95% CI 0.78–1.01). Interventions delivered at home were associated with a 25% lower rate (IRR 0.75, 95% CI 0.62–0.91).

Source author's evidence grade: B; not site verification or professional approval.

Notes and dispute: In the same review, interventions that did not supply equipment had an IRR of 0.78 (95% CI 0.66–0.92); supplying equipment did not yield better results. The source attributes the main benefit to home visits, education and modifications and therefore labels equipment's benefit medium rather than large. For Chinese extinguishers, it advises checking the CCC mark and ensuring a stored-pressure unit's gauge is in the green zone. Many fire blankets are fibreglass: hold the straps rather than touching the material with bare hands. Their use on cooking-oil fires is disputed: a Dutch regulator tested 22 brands in 2014 and, according to the source, none consistently extinguished fires under ordinary use. The source advises turning off the heat and covering an oil pan with its lid. See this chapter's entry 3 for smoke and carbon-monoxide alarms, and chapter 13, entry 12 for tourniquets. The original source also links its household emergency-equipment checklist at docs/家庭应急装备清单.md for selection, placement and replacement intervals; that source-relative document is not a separately verified RecheckNest page.

Original source bibliography (titles retained as supplied): 应急管理部 (2020). 全国基础版家庭应急物资储备建议清单. https://www.mem.gov.cn/kp/shaq/202011/t20201129_372149.shtml ; Kendrick D 等 (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 ; 武胜县市场监督管理局 (2025). 手提式灭火器、防火门（窗）、点型感温（烟）火灾探测器消费提示. https://www.wusheng.gov.cn/gasylbzj/c109568/zzzq/content/content_1988424970198126592.html ; 贵州省消防救援总队 (2025). 居家必备灭火毯 功能用法全攻略（转载北京消防）. https://gz.119.gov.cn/xfkp/xfcs/202503/t20250313_87157898.html ; NVWA (2014). Blusdekens oktober 2014（荷兰食品与消费品安全局检查报告，原页面已下线，链接为 2021 年 10 月 20 日的网页存档）. https://web.archive.org/web/20211020154732/https://www.nvwa.nl/binaries/nvwa/documenten/consument/consumentenartikelen/non-food/overige-non-food/blusdekens-oktober-2014/Factsheet+Blusdekens+Oktober+2014.pdf