# Emergency Cards - full text > 29 first aid and safety cards, complete English text, reviewed 2026-07-26. > Published in 20 language editions at https://emergency-cards.com/. Educational content only. Not medical advice. Emergency numbers, protocols and legal duties differ between countries and change over time. Verify locally. Licence: free to use with attribution. See https://emergency-cards.com/license.xml --- ## Emergency numbers Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/emergency-numbers/ **Do this first:** Dial 112. It works in every EU country, from a locked phone and with no credit. 112 reaches police, fire and ambulance across the European Union and in more than 70 countries worldwide. The dispatcher decides which service to send, so you do not need to know which one you need. ### Step by step 1. Say where you are first. Street and number, town, or a landmark, a road marker, or the GPS position from your phone. 2. Say what happened in one sentence. A fall, a fire, a crash, chest pain. 3. Say how many people are hurt and whether anyone is unconscious or not breathing. 4. Give your phone number so they can call back if the line drops. 5. Do not hang up. The dispatcher tells you when the call is finished. 6. Follow the instructions exactly, including chest compressions if you are asked to start them. 7. Send someone to the street to wave the ambulance in, and unlock doors and gates. ### Never do this - Do not hang up before the dispatcher says you can. - Do not use the emergency line for general medical questions. Use the non urgent health line instead. - Do not assume somebody else has already called. Ask out loud and confirm it. ### Call emergency services if - Someone is unconscious, breathing abnormally, or not breathing at all. - Chest pain, sudden weakness on one side, sudden confusion or trouble speaking. - Bleeding that soaks through dressings, a serious fall, a fire, or a crash. ### Common questions **Does 112 work without credit or a SIM card?** Without credit, yes, everywhere: on mobile networks 112 connects from a locked phone and uses any available network, not just your own operator. Without a SIM card it depends on the country. Most EU states allow it, but Germany blocked SIM-less emergency calls in July 2009 and France in 2004, both because of hoax calls. Never plan on it abroad, keep a working SIM in the phone. **What if I do not speak the local language?** Ask for English. Most 112 centres in the EU have interpreters or an English speaking operator. Give your location first anyway, because numbers and street names carry across languages. --- ## CPR and resuscitation Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/cpr-resuscitation/ **Do this first:** Not breathing normally? Call 112, then push hard and fast in the centre of the chest, 100 to 120 times a minute. A person whose heart has stopped will not respond and will not breathe normally. Occasional gasping is not breathing. Chest compressions started in the first minutes are the single thing that decides survival. ### Step by step 1. Check for danger to yourself first. Traffic, electricity, fire, gas. 2. Shout at the person and shake their shoulders. No reaction means unresponsive. 3. Tilt the head back, lift the chin, then look and listen for normal breathing for no more than ten seconds. 4. Call 112, put the phone on speaker, and send someone for the nearest defibrillator. 5. Put the heel of one hand in the centre of the chest, the other hand on top, and press five to six centimetres deep, 100 to 120 times a minute. Let the chest come all the way back up between compressions. 6. If you are trained and willing, give two rescue breaths after every thirty compressions. If not, keep doing compressions only. 7. Swap with another person every two minutes if you can, and keep going until the crew takes over or the person wakes up. ### Never do this - Do not stop to search for a pulse. Untrained pulse checks waste time and are unreliable. - Do not be afraid of breaking ribs. Ribs heal, a brain without oxygen does not. - Do not leave the person alone to look for a defibrillator if you are the only one there. ### Call emergency services if - The person does not respond and is not breathing normally. - The person is gasping, snoring or making irregular noises and cannot be woken. - Someone collapses suddenly and you cannot rouse them. ### Common questions **What do I do with a defibrillator?** Turn it on and follow the voice prompts. It will not deliver a shock to a heart that does not need one. Keep compressing while the pads go on, and only stand clear when the device tells you to. **Is it different for a child?** Give five rescue breaths first, then thirty compressions to two breaths, pressing about a third of the depth of the chest. If you are untrained, use adult CPR anyway. Doing something beats doing nothing. --- ## Choking Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/choking/ **Do this first:** Ask loudly: are you choking? If they cannot answer, give five hard back blows between the shoulder blades now. A person with a fully blocked airway has three to four minutes before the brain starts running out of oxygen. They will not call for help, because they cannot make a sound. Grabbing the throat with both hands is the universal sign. ### Step by step 1. Ask: are you choking? If they can speak or cough loudly, do nothing except encourage the coughing. A working cough beats anything you can do. 2. If the cough is silent or they cannot breathe, stand to the side and slightly behind, support their chest with one hand and lean them forward. 3. Give up to five sharp blows between the shoulder blades with the heel of your hand. Check after each one whether the object is out. 4. If that fails, stand behind them, put your fist just above the navel, grip it with the other hand, and pull sharply inwards and upwards. Up to five times. 5. Keep alternating five back blows with five abdominal thrusts until the object comes out. 6. If the person goes limp, lower them to the ground, call 112, and start CPR at once. Compressions also push air against the object. 7. After any abdominal thrusts, the person must be checked by a doctor, even if they feel fine. ### Never do this - Do not sweep the mouth blindly with a finger. It pushes the object deeper. Remove only what you can clearly see and grip. - Do not use abdominal thrusts on a pregnant woman or a baby. Use chest thrusts for a pregnant woman, and back blows with chest thrusts for a baby. - Do not leave a choking person alone, not even to get help. ### Call emergency services if - The airway is fully blocked, or the person keeps choking after the first back blows. - The person became unresponsive at any point, even briefly. - Any choking that needed abdominal thrusts, once the object is out. ### Common questions **What about a baby under one year?** Lay the baby face down along your forearm with the head low, give five back blows between the shoulder blades, then turn them over and give five chest compressions with two fingers. Never abdominal thrusts on a baby. **I am choking and completely alone. What can I do?** Call 112 even if you cannot speak, and leave the line open. Push your own abdomen sharply against a chair back or table edge, just above the navel. Repeat hard until the object moves. --- ## Heart attack Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/heart-attack/ **Do this first:** Call 112 now. Sit the person down half upright and keep them still. A heart attack is blocked blood flow to the heart muscle. Every minute of delay destroys more muscle. Most people wait far too long because they hope it is indigestion. ### Step by step 1. Call 112 straight away and say chest pain, so the dispatcher sends the right team. 2. Sit the person down with their back supported and knees bent, half sitting. Do not let them walk about. 3. Loosen tight clothing at the neck and waist, and open a window. 4. Ask about prescribed nitrate spray or tablets and help them take their own medication. 5. If the dispatcher advises it, and the person is fully awake and not allergic, they can slowly chew one 300 mg aspirin tablet. 6. Stay with them, keep them calm, and note the time the pain started. 7. If they lose consciousness and stop breathing normally, start CPR immediately. ### Never do this - Do not drive them to hospital yourself. An ambulance starts treatment on the way. - Do not give food or drink apart from their medication. - Do not let them walk to the car or climb stairs. ### Call emergency services if - Chest pressure or pain lasting more than a few minutes, or that comes and goes. - Pain spreading to the arm, jaw, neck, back or stomach, with sweating, nausea or breathlessness. - Sudden severe breathlessness, grey skin or a feeling of doom, especially in women, older people and people with diabetes, who often have no chest pain at all. ### Common questions **What if it turns out to be nothing?** Then a doctor rules it out and you have lost nothing. Emergency services would far rather come to a false alarm than arrive too late. **Aspirin, yes or no?** Only when a dispatcher or doctor says so, only if the person is awake and swallowing safely, and never if they are allergic or have been told to avoid it. --- ## Stroke Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/stroke/ **Do this first:** Call 112 the moment you suspect a stroke. Say the word stroke, and say when the symptoms started. A stroke is a blocked or burst vessel in the brain, and roughly two million brain cells die every minute it goes untreated. The treatments that reverse it only work in the first few hours, so the clock is the whole game. ### Step by step 1. Do the FAST check. Face: ask them to smile, one side droops. Arms: ask them to raise both, one drifts down. Speech: ask a simple sentence, it comes out slurred or wrong. Time: any one sign means call 112 now. 2. Say stroke to the dispatcher and give the exact time the symptoms started, or the last time the person was seen well. Hospitals decide treatment by that clock. 3. Sit or lay the person down with head and shoulders slightly raised, and keep them still and calm. 4. Loosen anything tight around the neck, and if they wear dentures that are loose, take them out. 5. Give absolutely nothing to eat, drink or swallow. A stroke often paralyses swallowing, and anything in the mouth can end up in the lungs. 6. If they become unresponsive but breathe normally, put them in the recovery position, weak side down, and watch the breathing. 7. If the symptoms fade after a few minutes, call anyway. A passing episode is often the warning shot hours before the full stroke. ### Never do this - Do not give aspirin. A heart attack and a stroke are opposite problems here, and aspirin makes a bleeding stroke worse. - Do not wait to see whether it passes, and do not let them talk you into lying down for a nap first. - Do not let them drive themselves, or you drive them. The ambulance alerts the stroke unit on the way. ### Call emergency services if - A drooping face, a weak arm, or slurred speech, even if mild and even if it stops. - Sudden severe headache unlike any before, sudden loss of vision, balance or understanding. - Sudden confusion or one-sided numbness in someone who was fine minutes ago. ### Common questions **The symptoms went away. Do we still go?** Yes, immediately. A transient episode means a clot broke up on its own, and a large share of full strokes follow within days or hours. It is the one warning you get. **How is this different from a heart attack?** A heart attack usually hurts, a stroke usually does not. Stroke shows as lost function: a face, an arm, speech, vision. And the aspirin rule is opposite, none for a stroke. --- ## Severe bleeding Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/severe-bleeding/ **Do this first:** Press hard directly on the wound with both hands and do not release the pressure. A person can bleed to death from a limb wound in a few minutes. Direct pressure stops most bleeding, and firm unbroken pressure beats any dressing. ### Step by step 1. Protect yourself with gloves or a plastic bag if one is within reach, but do not delay pressure to find them. 2. Press directly on the wound with a clean cloth, a shirt, or your bare hand. Push hard. 3. Call 112, or have somebody else call while you keep pressing. 4. Lay the person down and raise their legs if they look pale, cold or faint. 5. If blood soaks through, add more material on top and keep pressing. Do not remove the first layer. 6. If a limb keeps bleeding heavily, put a tourniquet high and tight above the wound, tighten it until the bleeding stops, and write down the time. 7. Keep the person warm with a coat or blanket and keep talking to them. ### Never do this - Do not pull out an object stuck in a wound. Pad around it and press beside it. - Do not loosen a tourniquet once it is on. Only medical staff should release it. - Do not use thin cord or wire as a tourniquet. It cuts into the limb and does not stop arterial flow. ### Call emergency services if - Blood is spurting, pooling, or soaking through dressings. - The person is pale, cold, sweating, confused or drowsy. - Bleeding from a deep wound, an amputation, or after a crash or crush injury. ### Common questions **Can a tourniquet cost someone their limb?** Current practice accepts a correctly applied tourniquet for hours. Uncontrolled bleeding kills far faster than a tourniquet damages a limb. **And a nosebleed?** Sit forward, pinch the soft part of the nose for ten minutes without checking, and breathe through the mouth. Get help if it has not stopped after twenty minutes, or if it follows a head injury. --- ## Unconsciousness Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/unconsciousness/ **Do this first:** Shake and shout. No response? Tilt the head back and check breathing. Breathing normally means recovery position, not breathing means CPR. An unconscious person on their back can die from their own tongue and stomach contents, not from the thing that knocked them out. The whole job is to keep the airway open until help arrives, and it takes no equipment at all. ### Step by step 1. Check for danger, then shout at them and shake their shoulders firmly. 2. No response: tilt the head back, lift the chin, and check for normal breathing for up to ten seconds. 3. Breathing normally: call 112, then roll them onto their side into the recovery position. 4. Kneel beside them, place the near arm at a right angle palm up, bring the far hand against their near cheek, bend the far knee, and roll them towards you by that knee. 5. Tilt the head back again once they are on their side, so the airway stays open and anything in the mouth can drain out. 6. Check the breathing every minute. If it stops or becomes gasping, roll them onto their back and start CPR. 7. Cover them with a coat or blanket, and if they must stay in position over thirty minutes, roll them onto the other side. ### Never do this - Do not put anything under the head of an unconscious person lying flat, and do not give them anything to drink. Both close the airway. - Do not assume a drunk person is just sleeping it off. Unconscious is unconscious, and vomiting on the back kills either way. - Do not move someone unconscious after a fall from height or a crash unless they vomit or stop breathing. Then the airway wins over the spine. ### Call emergency services if - Anyone who does not wake when shaken and shouted at. - Anyone who woke up but is confused, vomiting, or was out for more than a moment. - Any unconsciousness with a head injury, medication, alcohol, or diabetes involved. ### Common questions **They fainted and came round in a few seconds. Ambulance or not?** A simple faint with a quick full recovery in a young healthy person can usually be watched. Call if it happened during exercise, sitting or lying down, with chest pain, or in anyone older or with a heart condition. **Why on their side and not on their back?** On the back, the relaxed tongue falls into the throat and vomit runs into the lungs. On the side, gravity does the opposite of both. It is the cheapest life-saving trick in all of first aid. --- ## Burns Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/burns/ **Do this first:** Hold the burn under cool running water for a full twenty minutes. Start now, the clock matters more than anything else. A burn keeps cooking the tissue for many minutes after the heat source is gone. Twenty minutes of cool running water is the single treatment that changes how deep it goes, and it still helps if you start within three hours. ### Step by step 1. Get the person away from the heat, and put out burning clothing by stopping, dropping and rolling, or smothering with a blanket. 2. Hold the burn under cool running water, around 15 to 25 degrees, for a full twenty minutes. Not ice, not iced water. 3. While cooling, remove rings, watches and loose clothing near the burn before it swells. Leave anything stuck to the skin exactly where it is. 4. After cooling, cover the burn loosely with cling film laid on, not wrapped tight, or a clean non fluffy cloth. 5. Keep the person warm everywhere else. Cooling a large burn cools the whole body, and children chill fast. 6. Call 112 for any large or deep burn, and give the person small sips of water while you wait. 7. Treat every electrical and chemical burn as serious, and for chemicals keep rinsing far beyond twenty minutes. ### Never do this - Do not put butter, oil, toothpaste, ice or any cream on a fresh burn. Everything except water makes the assessment and the damage worse. - Do not burst blisters. They are the sterile dressing your body already made. - Do not pull off clothing stuck to a burn. Cut around it and let the hospital deal with it. ### Call emergency services if - A burn larger than the person's palm, or any deep burn that is white, leathery or painless. - Any burn to the face, neck, hands, feet, genitals or across a joint, and any burn that goes all the way around a limb. - A burned child or elderly person, any electrical or chemical burn, and anyone who breathed smoke or hot air. ### Common questions **Why twenty minutes? Ten felt like plenty.** The heat stored in the tissue keeps deepening the burn long after the pain eases. Studies behind the current guidance show twenty minutes of running water measurably reduces the depth and the need for surgery. **What about sunburn?** Cool showers, plain moisturiser or aloe once the skin is cooled, water to drink, and shade until it settles. See a doctor for blisters over a large area, fever, or a sunburned baby. --- ## Fractures Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/fractures/ **Do this first:** Keep the limb still exactly as you found it and support it in that position. A broken bone hurts, swells and often looks wrong. The damage that matters usually happens after the injury, when somebody tries to move or straighten the limb. ### Step by step 1. Stop the person moving and calm them. Sit or lie them in the most comfortable position. 2. Support the injured limb by hand, or with rolled clothing packed on both sides. 3. Call 112 for a leg, hip, spine, pelvis or open fracture, or for any injury the person cannot support themselves. 4. Cover an open wound with a clean dressing and press gently beside the bone, never on it. 5. Apply cold through a cloth for up to twenty minutes to limit swelling. Never put ice on bare skin. 6. Check the fingers or toes beyond the injury. Cold, blue, numb or pulseless means an urgent problem, so tell the dispatcher. 7. Give nothing to eat or drink, in case an anaesthetic is needed. ### Never do this - Do not push a bone back or straighten a deformed limb. - Do not let the person walk on a suspected leg, hip or pelvis fracture. - Do not move anyone with a suspected spine or neck injury unless they are in immediate danger. ### Call emergency services if - The limb is deformed, bone is visible, or the person cannot use it at all. - Suspected injury to the head, neck, spine, hip or pelvis. - Fingers or toes beyond the injury are numb, blue, cold or pale. ### Common questions **Break or sprain?** You cannot tell reliably without an X-ray, and it does not change the first aid. Support it, cool it, and have it looked at. **Should I make a splint?** Only if you have to move the person and help is far away. Pad it well, immobilise the joints above and below, and check circulation again after tying. --- ## Hypothermia Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/hypothermia/ **Do this first:** Get the person out of the cold and wind, off the cold ground, out of wet clothes and into dry layers, head covered. Hypothermia starts long before ice and snow. Wet clothes, wind and exhaustion can chill a body at ten degrees above zero. The trap is the brain: as the core cools, judgement fades first, so the victim rarely knows they are in trouble. ### Step by step 1. Move the person somewhere dry and out of the wind, and put insulation between them and the ground. Cold ground steals heat faster than cold air. 2. Take off wet clothing, cut it off if needed, and wrap them in dry layers, blankets or a foil blanket, head and neck covered. 3. Call 112 for anyone who has stopped shivering, is confused, clumsy or drowsy. That is moderate hypothermia and it does not fix itself. 4. Give warm sweet drinks only if they are fully awake and can swallow. No alcohol, it opens the skin vessels and dumps the core heat. 5. Warm the trunk first: chest, back, armpits, groin. Warm packs wrapped in cloth, body-to-body contact under blankets, a warm room. 6. Handle a badly chilled person gently and keep them lying flat. Rough movement of a cold heart can trigger a fatal rhythm. 7. If they become unresponsive, check breathing for up to a minute, it can be very slow, and start CPR only if there is none. Keep going, cold bodies survive long resuscitations. ### Never do this - Never give alcohol, and never rub or massage the limbs. Both push cold blood from the shell into the core and can stop the heart. - Never put a badly chilled person into a hot bath or against direct heat. Rewarming must be gentle and from the middle out. - Never declare a cold person dead. Nobody is dead until they are warm and dead, that decision belongs to a hospital. ### Call emergency services if - Shivering has stopped, or the person is confused, stumbling, slurring or unusually sleepy. - Any hypothermia in a child, an older person, or anyone injured, drunk or found outdoors. - The person is rigid, barely breathing or unresponsive. Start care and keep the line open. ### Common questions **Shivering stopped, is that improvement?** The opposite. Shivering is the body's heater, and it shuts down when fuel runs out or the core drops further. A cold person who stops shivering and goes quiet is getting worse, not better. **What about frostbitten fingers or toes?** Warm the whole person first. Thaw frozen parts in water around 37 to 39 degrees for half an hour, never by fire or rubbing, and never thaw them if they could freeze again before reaching care. Refreezing destroys the tissue. --- ## Heat exhaustion and heatstroke Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/heat-illness/ **Do this first:** Get the person out of the heat, lay them down, cool them with water and moving air, and give sips of water if they are fully awake. Heat kills in two stages. Heat exhaustion, pale, sweaty, weak and sick, still responds to shade, water and rest. Heatstroke, hot skin and a confused or unconscious brain, is an emergency where every minute of cooling decides the damage. ### Step by step 1. Move them to shade or a cool room, lay them down and raise the legs slightly. 2. Strip off excess clothing and cool the skin: spray or sponge with water and fan them, cold packs wrapped in cloth to neck, armpits and groin. 3. If they are fully awake, give water or a sports drink in steady sips, not litres at once. 4. Reassess after thirty minutes. Heat exhaustion should clearly improve. If it does not, treat it as heatstroke and call 112. 5. Heatstroke, meaning hot skin with confusion, staggering, seizure or fading consciousness: call 112 immediately and say heatstroke. 6. Cool aggressively while you wait: the fastest safe method available, immersion in cool water up to the neck for a fit young person, or continuous water plus fanning for everyone else. 7. If they become unresponsive but breathe normally, recovery position, keep cooling, and monitor the breathing. ### Never do this - Never give anything to drink to someone confused or drowsy. It will end in the lungs, not the stomach. - Never give fever medicines like paracetamol or ibuprofen for heatstroke. This is not a fever, and they do not help, they load the liver and kidneys. - Never leave anyone, child or adult or animal, in a parked car, and never assume a heatstroke victim can rest it off. The clock is running. ### Call emergency services if - Hot skin together with confusion, strange behaviour, staggering, seizure or fainting. - Symptoms that do not clearly improve within thirty minutes of shade, cooling and fluids. - Heat illness in a child, an older person, or anyone with heart disease or on regular medication. ### Common questions **How do I tell exhaustion from heatstroke?** Look at the brain, not the sweat. Exhausted people are miserable but make sense. Heatstroke changes the person: confusion, aggression, staggering, collapse. Sweating can still be present in heatstroke, so its absence proves nothing. **How do I avoid it on a hot day?** Drink before you are thirsty, shift work and sport to morning and evening, wear a hat and light clothing, and check on older neighbours daily. Most heat deaths are people alone in hot flats, not hikers. --- ## Bites and stings Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/bites-and-stings/ **Do this first:** For any sting or bite watch the mouth and breathing for the first minutes. Swelling of face or tongue, wheezing or faintness means 112 now. Most bites and stings are pain, not danger. The two real killers are allergy, which strikes in minutes anywhere on the body, and infection, which arrives days later. Everything in between is cleaning, cooling and patience. ### Step by step 1. Insect sting: scrape a visible bee stinger out sideways with a fingernail or card, wash with soap and water, cool through cloth. A sting in the mouth or throat gets ice to suck and a 112 call. 2. Watch for allergy for thirty minutes: hives spreading, swelling of lips or eyes, tight chest, wheezing, vomiting or faintness. Any of these means 112, and the person's own adrenaline pen first, into the outer thigh. 3. Tick: grasp it with fine tweezers right at the skin and pull steadily straight out. Wash, note the date, and see a doctor about a growing red ring or fever in the weeks after. 4. Animal or human bite: wash thoroughly under running water with soap for several minutes, cover, and see a doctor the same day. Bites infect deeply, and rabies and tetanus need checking. 5. European viper bite: call 112, keep the person still and calm, immobilise the limb at heart level, take off rings and watches, and mark the swelling edge with a pen and the time. 6. Jellyfish: rinse with sea water, not fresh water, lift off tentacle bits with tweezers or a card edge, then hot water for the pain if available. 7. Cool swellings through cloth, give the person's usual antihistamine for itch if they are fully awake, and photograph the animal only if it is safe and free. ### Never do this - Never cut, suck or tourniquet a snakebite, and never chase the snake to kill it. All of it worsens the outcome, and the hospital does not need the body. - Never squeeze a bee stinger with fingers or tweezers, that injects the rest of the venom. Scrape it. - Never burn a tick, smother it with oil or twist it with fingers. Stressed ticks vomit into the wound. ### Call emergency services if - Face, lip or tongue swelling, wheezing, tight throat, widespread hives or faintness after any sting or bite. - Every snakebite, every sting inside the mouth or throat, and dozens of stings at once. - A bite from any animal that was wild, strange-acting or unvaccinated, or any deep bite to hand, face or joint. ### Common questions **When does a bite need a doctor even without allergy?** Same day for every animal and human bite that broke skin, for punctures on hands and face, and if your tetanus shot is over ten years old. In the days after, growing redness, warmth, pus or fever means infection. **The adrenaline pen, when and how?** At the first signs of a serious reaction, not as a last resort. Orange or coloured tip against the outer thigh, straight through clothing, hold ten seconds. Then 112 even if it helps, the reaction can return. --- ## Drowning Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/drowning/ **Do this first:** Do not jump in after them. Reach with a pole or branch, throw something that floats, and call 112. Drowning is silent and takes under a minute, no waving, no shouting, just a head slipping low in the water. And it routinely kills the rescuer: a panicking person will climb whoever swims to them. The rule that saves both of you is reach or throw, do not go. ### Step by step 1. Shout to others, call 112, and keep your eyes locked on the person. On open water, note a fixed point on the far shore in line with them. 2. Reach from firm ground with a pole, branch, towel or paddle, lying down so you cannot be pulled in. 3. If reaching fails, throw a lifebuoy, a rope, a cooler, an empty canister, anything that floats, and tell them to hold on and kick. 4. Enter the water only as the very last resort if you are a strong swimmer, take a float with you, and approach from behind. 5. Out of the water: check response and breathing. If not breathing normally, give five rescue breaths first, then thirty compressions to two breaths. In drowning, the breaths matter. 6. If they breathe but are unresponsive, recovery position so water can drain, strip wet clothes, cover them warm. 7. Everyone pulled from the water goes to a doctor, even if they feel fine. Inhaled water can inflame the lungs hours later. ### Never do this - Never swim to a panicking person without a float between you. A drowning person will push you under to climb up. - Never press on the belly or hang the person upside down to empty water. It wastes time and causes vomiting into the lungs. - Never dive into unknown or shallow water, and never chase a person swept away along the bank alone without calling first. ### Call emergency services if - Anyone struggling in the water, anyone pulled out unresponsive or not breathing normally. - Anyone who was underwater even briefly and now coughs, breathes fast or behaves strangely. - Any child after any submersion incident, however brief it seemed. ### Common questions **Why breaths first in drowning, when regular CPR skips them?** A drowned heart usually stopped from lack of oxygen, not from a rhythm problem. Refilling the lungs first attacks the actual cause. If you cannot or will not give breaths, do compressions anyway, they still help. **Cold water, how long is rescue worth attempting?** Long. Cold water slows the brain's oxygen use, and children especially have survived prolonged submersion in cold water. Keep resuscitating until professionals take over. --- ## Electric shock Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/electric-shock/ **Do this first:** Switch the power off at the breaker or pull the plug. Do not touch the person while the current is on. A person in contact with live electricity is part of the circuit. Touching them makes you the second casualty. Every electrical injury needs medical assessment, even when the skin looks fine. ### Step by step 1. Switch off the circuit breaker, pull the plug, or have the supply cut. That is step one, not step two. 2. For high voltage or overhead lines, stay at least twenty metres away and wait for the utility company. Voltage arcs and travels through the ground. 3. Once the power is confirmed off, check whether the person responds and is breathing normally. 4. Call 112 and say electric shock, so they check for heart rhythm problems. 5. If breathing is not normal, start CPR and use a defibrillator as soon as one arrives. 6. Cool burns under running cool water for twenty minutes, then cover loosely with a clean non fluffy dressing or cling film. 7. Look for a second burn where the current left the body, usually on a hand or a foot. ### Never do this - Do not touch the person, or anything they are touching, until the power is off. - Do not use water on or near a live circuit. - Do not let anyone go home unchecked after a shock through the body. Heart rhythm can fail hours later. ### Call emergency services if - Any mains voltage shock that passed through the body. - Any high voltage or lightning contact. - Burns, unconsciousness, an irregular heartbeat, confusion or muscle pain after the shock. ### Common questions **Is a small shock harmless?** A brief tingle from a household socket with no symptoms usually is. If the person was thrown, could not let go, felt chest pain or lost consciousness, they need a hospital check with an ECG. **What about a lightning strike?** Lightning casualties are safe to touch immediately. Treat the ones who appear dead first, because their hearts often restart with prompt CPR. --- ## Fire safety Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/fire-safety/ **Do this first:** Alert everyone, get out, and only call once you are outside and safe. Smoke kills long before flames do. The breathable air in a burning room can last less than two minutes. Everything you might go back for can be replaced, so leave. ### Step by step 1. Shout to raise the alarm and press the fire alarm call point if there is one. 2. Get everyone out along the marked escape route, helping anyone who needs it. 3. Stay low. The clearer, cooler air is near the floor. 4. Close doors behind you. A closed door buys many minutes. 5. Use the stairs. Never a lift. 6. Call 112 from outside and give the address, what is burning, and whether anyone is still inside. 7. Go to the assembly point and stay there, so nobody is reported missing. ### Never do this - Do not go back inside for belongings, a phone or a pet. - Do not put water on burning oil or on live electrical equipment. - Do not open a door that feels hot to the back of your hand. Find another way out and signal from a window. ### Call emergency services if - Any fire you did not put out within seconds with an extinguisher. - Smoke inside a wall, a ceiling or an electrical panel. - Anyone who has breathed smoke, even if they feel fine. ### Common questions **Should I fight the fire?** Only if it is small, your escape route is clear behind you, and you know the extinguisher. If the first attempt does not put it out, leave. **A pan fire in the kitchen?** Turn off the heat if you can reach it safely, cover the pan with a lid or fire blanket, and leave it covered. Never carry it outside and never use water. --- ## Fire extinguishers Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/fire-extinguishers/ **Do this first:** Fight a fire only while it is smaller than you, your exit is clear behind you, and the extinguisher matches what is burning. A portable extinguisher empties in fifteen to twenty seconds. That is enough for a wastebasket, not for a burning room. The letters on the label are the whole science: they say which fires this unit can touch and which ones it will make worse. ### Step by step 1. Read the class letters before you ever need them. A is solids like wood and fabric, B is liquids, C is gases, D is metals, F is cooking oils and fats. 2. Match the agent to the fire. Water takes only A. Foam takes A and B. Powder takes A, B and C and most household fires. CO2 takes B and electrical equipment. Wet chemical takes F, the burning pan. 3. Pull the pin, and test with a short burst before you approach. 4. Aim at the base of the flames, not at the smoke. The fire lives where fuel meets air, at the bottom. 5. Squeeze and sweep side to side across the base, moving in slowly. Keep your exit behind your back the whole time. 6. When the flames are out, watch the spot. Embers reignite, so be ready to repeat, and ventilate powder and CO2 fumes. 7. If the extinguisher runs empty and anything still burns, close the door on it, get out and call 112. You had your one attempt. ### Never do this - Never use water or foam on live electrical equipment, and never water on burning oil or fat. One electrocutes you, the other throws a fireball. - Never hold the metal horn of a CO2 extinguisher. It drops to minus seventy degrees and freezes skin on contact. - Never turn your back on a fire you just put out, and never let the fire get between you and the door. ### Call emergency services if - Any fire your first extinguisher did not finish, and any fire in a wall, ceiling or electrical panel. - Any fire in a room filling with smoke, however small the flames look. - After every extinguished fire involving gas equipment, so the installation gets checked. ### Common questions **Which single extinguisher should I buy for home?** A six kilogram ABC powder unit covers the widest range, but powder ruins electronics and fills the room with blinding dust. For a kitchen, add a fire blanket and, if you fry often, a small wet chemical unit. Mount them by the exit, not next to the cooker. **How often does it need service?** Look at the gauge monthly, needle in the green. Most manufacturers require professional inspection every one to two years and the pressure test at longer intervals, and the sticker on the unit tells you when the last one was. An extinguisher without service is a decoration. --- ## Gas leak and carbon monoxide Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/gas-leak/ **Do this first:** If you smell gas, do not touch any switch or flame. Open windows and doors on your way out, close the gas valve if it is on your path, and call from outside. Natural gas is given its rotten-egg smell on purpose, so your nose is the detector. Carbon monoxide is the opposite: no smell, no colour, no warning, just a headache that gets better the moment you step outside. One spark handles the first, one cheap detector handles the second. ### Step by step 1. Gas smell: stop, and touch nothing electrical. No light switches, no doorbell, no lift button, no phone call inside the flat. 2. Open windows and doors as you move towards the exit, so the gas thins instead of gathering. 3. Close the main gas valve if it sits on your escape route, at the meter or the cylinder. 4. Get everyone out, knock on neighbours' doors with your fist, do not ring the bell, and call 112 and the gas emergency line from outside. 5. Carbon monoxide: suspect it when several people and pets feel sick in the same room at the same time, with headache, nausea, dizziness or confusion that eases outdoors. 6. Get everyone into fresh air at once, count heads, and call 112. Say carbon monoxide, so the crew brings the meter. 7. Nobody goes back in until the fire service has measured and cleared the space, and the boiler, heater or flue that caused it stays off until a technician passes it. ### Never do this - Never flip a switch, light a flame or start a car inside a space that smells of gas. Turning a light off sparks the same as turning it on. - Never sleep in a room with a running combustion heater, charcoal grill or generator, and never let an engine run in a closed garage. - Never silence a beeping CO detector because you feel fine. Get out first and doubt it later, low doses lie. ### Call emergency services if - Any gas smell you cannot stop immediately at the valve, and any smell in a cellar or stairwell. - Anyone confused, fainting or vomiting in a room with a boiler, heater or fire. - A CO detector alarm, even if everybody feels healthy. ### Common questions **Where do CO detectors belong, and how many?** One in every room with a fuel-burning appliance and one near each sleeping area, mounted at breathing height, roughly one to two metres up, not glued to the ceiling like a smoke alarm. Replace the unit by the date printed on it, the sensor wears out in five to ten years. **The smell is faint and I think it is just the cooker left on. Still the whole routine?** Turn the cooker off, open the windows and step out while it clears, still without touching other switches. If the smell does not fade in minutes, or you cannot find an innocent source, treat it as a leak and call. Gas companies genuinely prefer a hundred false calls to one explosion. --- ## Chemical exposure Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/chemical-exposure/ **Do this first:** Move upwind and away from the substance, then rinse the exposed skin or eye with plenty of water. With chemicals the first decision is distance. Vapours travel, and a rescuer who breathes them becomes the second casualty. What you do in the next few minutes decides how deep the damage goes. ### Step by step 1. Move yourself and others upwind and uphill, out of the vapour, and stop anyone else entering. 2. Call 112 and give the product name if you can read it from a safe distance. 3. Take off contaminated clothing, cutting it away rather than pulling it over the head. 4. Rinse affected skin under running water for at least twenty minutes. 5. Rinse a splashed eye from the inner corner outwards for at least twenty minutes, holding the eyelid open. Remove contact lenses if that takes only seconds. 6. If a substance was swallowed, rinse the mouth and give small sips of water only if the person is fully awake, then call the poison information centre. 7. Keep the label, the safety data sheet, or a photo of the packaging and hand it to the crew. ### Never do this - Do not make anyone vomit. Corrosives burn a second time on the way back up. - Do not try to neutralise an acid with a base, or the other way round. - Do not enter a confined space or a vapour cloud to rescue somebody without breathing apparatus. ### Call emergency services if - Breathing difficulty, coughing, a tight chest or dizziness after exposure. - Any splash into the eyes, or chemical burns to the skin. - Anything swallowed, and any exposure involving a child. ### Common questions **How long do I rinse?** At least twenty minutes for skin and eyes, and longer for strong acids and alkalis. Keep rinsing on the way to hospital if you can. **Where is the safety data sheet?** The employer has to keep it accessible for every hazardous substance in the workplace. Section 4 is the first aid section. Read it before the accident, not during it. --- ## Industrial accident Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/industrial-accident/ **Do this first:** Go into the nearest solid building, close windows and doors, switch off ventilation, and turn on the official channel. Do not drive towards the smoke. A major accident in a plant, a rail tanker or a warehouse sends its danger through the air. The protection is not distance you run, it is walls between you and the cloud, and knowing that the strange siren means go inside and shut the air out, not come and look. ### Step by step 1. Alarm, blast or a strange spreading smell: go inside the nearest solid building at once. Shelter beats running through a cloud. 2. Close windows and doors, switch off ventilation, air conditioning and forced heating, tape big gaps, and gather in an inner room upstairs, most heavy gases hug the ground. 3. Turn on the official channel, national radio, warning app or municipality, and do exactly what it says. Sirens have different signals, learn your local ones. 4. Call 112 only for injuries or immediate danger. During a big event the lines must stay free for those. 5. If a cloud catches you outdoors, move across the wind, not with it or against it, cover mouth and nose with wet cloth and get behind walls. 6. Contaminated on the skin: take the outer clothes off outside the room where you shelter, seal them in a bag and rinse skin thoroughly. 7. Leave shelter or evacuate only when the authorities say so, and by the route they name, not the shortcut past the plant. ### Never do this - Never drive or walk towards smoke, vapour or the accident site for a look or a video. The second explosion and the drifting cloud take the spectators. - Never use lifts during the alarm, and never light flames or smoke if the release could be flammable. - Never call schools and relatives non-stop. Schools shelter children themselves, one short message beats a jammed network. ### Call emergency services if - Anyone with breathing trouble, chemical burns or contamination on the skin. - Anyone injured by the blast or trapped near the site. - Reporting the accident itself if it clearly has not been reported yet, then clear the line. ### Common questions **How do I know what the sirens mean?** Every country tests its sirens on a fixed day and publishes the signals, typically a wavering tone for general danger and a steady tone for all clear. Look up your municipality's page once, on a calm day, and learn which plant hazards exist near you. **Do household masks help against a chemical cloud?** Against gases and vapours, no, a wet cloth or an FFP mask only filters particles. Which is exactly why the advice is walls, closed windows and stopped ventilation, not running outside in a mask. --- ## Road accident Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/road-accident/ **Do this first:** Stop safely past the scene, hazard lights on, high-visibility vest before you step out, warning triangle well back. At a crash site the traffic is the biggest threat, more helpers are hit by passing cars than hurt by anything else. Thirty seconds spent making the scene visible protect you, the casualties and everyone arriving behind you. ### Step by step 1. Park behind the scene if possible, hazards on, vest on before leaving the car. Place the triangle far back, on a motorway around 100 metres or more, before a bend or crest. 2. Look before you act: leaking fuel, smoke, traffic, a live cable, a loose load. Switch off crashed cars' ignition if you can reach it. 3. Call 112 with the location, number of vehicles, number of injured, and whether anyone is trapped, unconscious or the road is blocked. 4. Speak to every casualty. Whoever answers, breathes and is not bleeding heavily can wait. Whoever does not answer gets you first. 5. An unconscious person in a car: tilt the head back carefully where they sit to open the airway. Move them out only for absent breathing, fire or water, then CPR on the ground. 6. Stop heavy bleeding with direct pressure, cover wounds, and keep casualties warm and still. A conscious motorcyclist keeps the helmet on. 7. Nobody walks around: keep the uninjured behind the barrier or off the road, and send someone to wave the emergency services in. ### Never do this - Never pull people out of vehicles just because it looks wrong. Extraction is for absent breathing, fire or sinking, otherwise the spine waits for professionals. - Never remove a motorcyclist's helmet if they are conscious, and if you must for CPR, it is a careful two-person job. - Never stand between two vehicles or on the traffic side of the wreck, and never let anyone smoke near spilt fuel. ### Call emergency services if - Any crash with injury, anyone trapped, unconscious or complaining of neck or back pain. - Fuel leaking, smoke, a lorry with hazard plates, or a blocked road. - Any hit pedestrian, cyclist or motorcyclist, even one who says they are fine and wants to leave. ### Common questions **Am I required to stop and help?** In most of Europe yes, failing to give aid within your abilities at an accident is a criminal offence. What is asked of you is what anyone can do: secure the scene, call 112, press on bleeding. Nobody expects you to be a paramedic. **The car might explode, should I not pull everyone out?** Film explosions are fiction, fuel fires are real but visible: smoke and flames. No fire means the greater danger to a casualty with a spinal injury is usually you moving them. Fire changes everything, then you extract fast and roughly, alive beats perfect. --- ## Floods Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/floods/ **Do this first:** Move to higher ground now and stay out of moving water. Most flood deaths happen in vehicles. Thirty centimetres of moving water floats a car, and fifteen centimetres knocks an adult off their feet. Water hides holes, currents and open manholes. ### Step by step 1. Move upstairs or to higher ground as soon as a warning is issued. Do not wait for the water to arrive. 2. Switch off electricity, gas and water at the mains if you can reach them dry and safely. 3. Take documents, medication, a charged phone, a power bank and drinking water with you. 4. Follow official alerts from the civil protection service and the local authority, not social media. 5. If you are driving and the road ahead is flooded, turn round and find another route. 6. If water is rising inside a building, go up, but never into a windowless attic with no way out to the roof. 7. Do not go home until the authorities confirm the building and the electricity are safe. ### Never do this - Do not drive or walk through moving water, however shallow it looks. - Do not touch switches or appliances with wet hands, or while standing in water. - Do not drink tap water after a flood until the authorities confirm it is safe. ### Call emergency services if - Anyone trapped by rising water, in a vehicle or a building. - A person swept away, or anyone missing during a flood. - Any collapse, gas smell or electrical arcing in a flooded building. ### Common questions **How deep is too deep to drive?** Any moving water. Ten centimetres of fast water can push a small car sideways, and you cannot see the road surface underneath it. **What belongs in a flood bag?** Documents in a waterproof bag, a week of medication, a torch, a power bank, water, food, dry clothes, cash, and phone numbers written on paper. --- ## Storm and high wind Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/storm/ **Do this first:** Get indoors before the storm arrives, away from windows, and stay out from under trees, scaffolding and loose roofs. A storm kills with what it throws: branches, tiles, scaffolding, glass, and with lightning that reaches ten kilometres ahead of the rain. Thunder you can hear means you are already in range, and the last minutes before the front is the worst time to be finishing anything outdoors. ### Step by step 1. When a warning comes, bring in or tie down everything loose: furniture, trampolines, bins, and park the car away from trees. 2. Charge phones and powerbanks, and know where your torch is before the lights go out. 3. During the storm stay inside, away from windows, best in an inner room. Keep children and pets in. 4. Hear thunder outdoors: get into a building or a hard-topped car. No shelter means crouch low in a hollow, feet together, away from lone trees, poles, fences and water. 5. Postpone driving. If it catches you, slow right down, hands firm on the wheel for the gusts, and never stop under trees or power lines. 6. After the front passes wait, most trees and tiles fall in the gusts after. Treat every downed cable as live, twenty metres of distance. 7. Damage without injury goes to the fire service line when the network calms, injuries and immediate danger go to 112 now. ### Never do this - Never shelter under a tree in a thunderstorm, and never keep the golf round, the harvest run or the roof job going for one more minute. - Never touch downed lines or anything they touch, wires, fences, puddles. - Never go for a look at the sea or the riverbank in a storm. Waves take people from piers every year. ### Call emergency services if - Anyone injured by lightning, falling debris or glass. Lightning victims are safe to touch, start CPR if needed. - A tree or structure fallen on a person, vehicle or occupied house. - A downed power line, and fire caused by a strike. ### Common questions **How far away is the lightning?** Count seconds from flash to thunder and divide by three for kilometres. Under thirty seconds means take shelter now, and stay there thirty minutes after the last thunder. **Is a car safe in a thunderstorm?** A hard-topped car is good protection, the metal shell carries the current around you. Park away from trees, keep hands off metal parts and radio aerials. Convertibles, bikes and tractors do not count. --- ## Earthquake Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/earthquake/ **Do this first:** Drop to your knees, cover your head and neck under a sturdy table, and hold on until the shaking stops. In an earthquake almost nobody is hurt by the ground, people are hurt by what falls: shelves, facades, glass, chimneys. That is why the answer is not running outside through the falling zone, it is drop, cover and hold on where you are, and moving calmly only when the shaking ends. ### Step by step 1. Indoors: drop, cover under a solid table or against an inner wall, hold on. Away from windows, mirrors, shelves and anything tall. 2. In bed: stay, face down, pillow over head and neck. Running barefoot through broken glass in the dark loses. 3. Outdoors: move to open ground away from buildings, walls, poles and lines, and stay there. In the car, stop away from bridges and buildings and remain inside. 4. When shaking stops, count heads, check for injuries, and put on solid shoes. Glass is everywhere. 5. Check gas by smell, water and electricity. Smell of gas means main valve off, windows open, out, no switches. Leave the rest off until checked. 6. Expect aftershocks, they topple what the first quake loosened. Leave a damaged building by the stairs and do not re-enter for anything. 7. Follow the official channel, use SMS instead of calls, and in coastal areas after a long or strong quake move uphill at once, do not wait for a tsunami warning. ### Never do this - Never run outside during the shaking, and never use lifts during or after. - Never stand in doorways, that is an old myth, modern doorframes protect nothing and the door itself batters you. - Never light flames or flip switches after the quake until you know there is no gas leak. ### Call emergency services if - Anyone trapped or injured by rubble. If you are trapped, tap on pipes, shout only as a last resort, cover your mouth against dust. - Smell of gas, fire, or a badly cracked building with people inside. - A neighbour who is vulnerable, alone, and not responding after the event. ### Common questions **There are no strong earthquakes here, why bother?** Weaker quakes reach far more of Europe than people think, and the same drop, cover and hold on works when a blast, a landslide or a passing tremor shakes the building. It costs one family drill a year. **What actually falls first at home?** Unanchored bookshelves and wardrobes, the television, glass cabinets, water heaters and things above the bed. Anchoring furniture to walls and moving heavy objects off high shelves is most of earthquake safety. --- ## Natural disasters Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/natural-disasters/ **Do this first:** Get indoors, away from windows, and switch on the official alert channel. Storms, earthquakes and heatwaves are survivable when the first hour is planned. Preparation done on a quiet day is worth more than any decision made during the event. ### Step by step 1. Learn the local warning signal and what it means. Much of Europe uses a rising and falling siren tone for general danger. 2. Keep a 72 hour bag ready. Water, food, medication, torch, power bank, radio, documents, cash and warm clothes. 3. Agree a family meeting point and one contact outside the area whom everyone can call or message. 4. In an earthquake, drop, cover and hold on under a solid table until the shaking stops, then leave calmly and keep away from buildings. 5. In a windstorm, close shutters, keep away from windows, and avoid trees, scaffolding and coastal roads. 6. In a heatwave, stay indoors during the hottest hours, drink before you feel thirsty, and check on older neighbours. 7. Follow the official civil protection channel and keep calls short, so the network stays open for emergency traffic. ### Never do this - Do not use lifts during an earthquake, a fire or a power warning. - Do not go outside to film the event. - Do not ignore an evacuation order because your house has never flooded or burned before. ### Call emergency services if - Anyone trapped, injured or missing after the event. - A collapsed structure, a gas leak, or a downed power line. - A neighbour who is vulnerable, alone and not answering. ### Common questions **How much water should I store?** About three litres per person per day for drinking and basic hygiene, for at least three days. **Will the mobile network work?** Often yes, but congested. Text messages get through when calls do not, so agree in advance that a short message means everyone is safe. --- ## Emergency kit Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/emergency-kit/ **Do this first:** Pack one bag per household today that keeps you going for 72 hours without shops, power or tap water. After a flood, blackout or evacuation order, the first three days are on you. The kit is not survivalism, it is one bag by the door that turns a night of chaos into an inconvenience, packed once on a calm day and checked twice a year. ### Step by step 1. Water first: three litres per person per day for drinking and basic hygiene, minimum three days. Store it, and add a way to make more drinkable, tablets or a filter. 2. Food that needs no cooking: canned goods with a can opener, nuts, bars, dried fruit, baby food if needed, and a bowl for the pet. 3. Light and information: a torch per person, spare batteries, a powerbank, and a battery or wind-up radio, the phone network dies before FM does. 4. Medicines for a week for every regular medication in the house, plus a first aid kit, spare glasses, and copies of prescriptions. 5. Papers and money: copies of IDs, insurance, deeds and key phone numbers in a waterproof pouch, and cash in small notes, card terminals die with the power. 6. Warmth and hygiene: a change of clothes, rain layer, foil blankets, soap, toothbrushes, toilet paper, wet wipes, bin bags, and menstrual supplies. 7. Put it where you can grab it in one minute, tell everyone in the household where it is, and check dates and batteries every spring and autumn. ### Never do this - Never let the kit depend on electricity alone. Every powered item needs a battery or hand-crank alternative. - Never pack it and forget it. Expired water tastes bad, expired medicines and dead batteries fail you at the worst hour. - Never plan around a car you might not reach, fuel you might not buy, or a lift that will not run. ### Call emergency services if - The kit is preparation, the numbers stay the same: 112 for immediate danger to life. - Follow official channels for evacuation orders and shelter locations. - Check on vulnerable neighbours, their kit is often the one that does not exist. ### Common questions **Is this not paranoid?** The EU officially asks every household to be self-sufficient for 72 hours, and every flood and blackout proves why: services triage the worst first, and shops empty in hours. One bag is cheap insurance you will statistically use. **What matters most if I only do three things?** Water, your daily medicines, and a charged powerbank with a torch. Those three cover the failures that actually hurt in the first night. --- ## Evacuation Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/evacuation/ **Do this first:** Leave immediately by the nearest marked exit and go to the assembly point. An evacuation succeeds or fails in the first sixty seconds, and it depends almost entirely on whether people move at once. Most delays are people finishing a task, looking for a bag, or waiting to see what everyone else does. ### Step by step 1. Go the moment the alarm sounds. Do not finish what you were doing. 2. Take the nearest marked exit, which is often not the way you came in. 3. Help anyone who needs assistance, and tell a warden about anyone who cannot leave. 4. Close doors and windows behind you, but only if it is safe and takes seconds. 5. Use the stairs. Never a lift. 6. Go to the assembly point, stay there, and report to the person doing the headcount. 7. Do not go back in for any reason until the fire service or the responsible person declares it clear. ### Never do this - Do not go back for belongings, a car, or a colleague you assume is inside. Tell the crew instead. - Do not park or stand where emergency vehicles need to get in. - Do not treat a drill as a joke. The point of a drill is that your feet already know the way. ### Call emergency services if - Anyone unaccounted for at the assembly point. - A blocked, locked or unusable escape route. - Anyone injured during the evacuation. ### Common questions **What about a colleague who uses a wheelchair?** Workplaces need a personal emergency evacuation plan for them, usually a protected refuge point with a call system, and named staff assigned to stay and assist. **How often should we drill?** National rules differ. Common practice is at least once a year, and again whenever the layout, the occupancy or the workforce changes significantly. --- ## Workplace safety Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/workplace-safety/ **Do this first:** Stop the work, make the area safe, and report it. An unsafe job never becomes safe by finishing it. Across the European Union, employers must assess risk, act on it and prove it. Directive 89/391/EEC gives every worker the right to leave a workplace in serious and imminent danger without penalty. ### Step by step 1. Read the risk assessment for your job. If you cannot find it, ask for it. It has to exist and be accessible. 2. Know who the trained first aiders and fire wardens are, and where the first aid kit and the defibrillator are kept. 3. Use the protective equipment provided, and report it when it is damaged, missing or the wrong size. 4. Report near misses in writing. A near miss is a free lesson that a serious accident would otherwise teach. 5. If the danger is real and immediate, stop the work, warn colleagues, and inform your supervisor. 6. After any accident, secure the scene, give first aid, and write down what happened before memories change. 7. Attend the safety training the employer is required to provide during working hours and at no cost to you. ### Never do this - Do not bypass a guard, an interlock or an alarm because it slows the job down. - Do not work at height, in a confined space, or on live electrical equipment without the required permit and training. - Do not sign a training record for training you never received. ### Call emergency services if - Any accident with injury, unconsciousness, burns or heavy bleeding. - A chemical release, a fire, a collapse, or a fall from height. - Anyone trapped in machinery or in a confined space. ### Common questions **Can I refuse dangerous work?** In the European Union, yes. Under directive 89/391/EEC a worker who leaves a place of serious and imminent danger must not be put at a disadvantage for it. National law sets the detail. **Who has to provide first aid at work?** The employer, in proportion to the size and the hazards of the workplace, including trained first aiders, equipment, and a way to call the emergency services. --- ## Armed conflict Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/armed-conflict/ **Do this first:** At the air raid warning move immediately to the deepest shelter you can reach, a cellar, a metro station, an inner room with no windows. In an armed conflict the survivable injuries come from glass, blast and collapsing light structures, and the protection is mass and distance: below ground level, away from windows, at least two walls between you and the outside. The habits are learnable, and the time to learn them is before the first siren. ### Step by step 1. Learn the warning signals and the location of the nearest shelter today, and keep the emergency kit and documents ready by the door. 2. At the siren, go down at once: cellar, underground garage, metro. No basement means an inner room, corridor or bathroom, lowest floor, no windows, two walls to the outside. 3. In the shelter sit away from the entrance, keep the kit, water and radio with you, and stay until the all clear, not until it merely sounds quiet. 4. Caught in the open during strikes: lie flat in any depression, ditch or behind a low wall, mouth open, hands over head, away from vehicles and glass fronts. 5. Never touch unexploded munitions, dropped weapons or unusual objects, however small or toy-like. Mark the place from a distance and report it. 6. Keep one contact outside the area whom everyone messages, agree family meeting points, and send short texts, the network must carry the emergency traffic. 7. Follow only official instructions on evacuation corridors and curfews, and carry documents and medicines on your body, not in the bag you might drop. ### Never do this - Never film or photograph military positions, checkpoints or defence works, and never share their locations online. It endangers you and everyone near them. - Never approach cluster remnants, mines or tripwires, and never let children play in rubble or abandoned vehicles. - Never stand at the window to watch. The glass and the pressure wave arrive faster than the sound. ### Call emergency services if - Anyone injured by blast, debris or gunfire, using pressure on bleeding and the basics that work everywhere. - Found munitions or suspicious objects, reported from a safe distance. - People trapped in damaged buildings after strikes. ### Common questions **What actually protects in a flat with no cellar?** The rule of two walls: an inner room where a projectile or glass would have to pass at least two walls to reach you, on the lowest floor available, away from all windows. A bathtub in an inner bathroom adds a solid shell around your core. **Should we leave or stay?** That depends on official corridors, your mobility and what awaits at the other end, and no card can decide it for you. What the card can say: decide early rather than under fire, keep the tank half full and the kit packed, and register with your country's embassy if you are abroad. --- ## Civil unrest Source: https://emergency-cards.com/en/civil-unrest/ **Do this first:** Leave the area at the first signs, moving sideways out of the crowd's direction, calmly, close to building walls. A crowd changes character in seconds, and the danger is rarely politics, it is physics: crush, panic runs, projectiles and gas. Everything in this card is one idea in different clothes, keep distance, and if you cannot, keep your feet and your calm. ### Step by step 1. Follow local news before you go out, and route around gatherings, transport hubs and symbolic squares on tense days. 2. Caught at the edge: leave immediately, diagonally, with the flow and gradually sideways, never against the stream. Walk, do not run. 3. Caught in a dense crowd: stay on your feet at all costs, arms up like a boxer to protect your chest, move with the mass and work towards the edge. 4. If you fall and cannot rise, curl on your left side, protect head and neck with arms, and get up the first instant the pressure eases. 5. Tear gas: do not rub, blink hard, move up wind and uphill, rinse eyes with water or saline from the inner corner out. Contact lenses come out as soon as possible. 6. Keep away from police lines, barricades and anyone throwing things, do not argue with anyone, and comply calmly at checkpoints. 7. Fix a meeting point with your group in advance in case you are separated, and message someone outside where you are. ### Never do this - Never watch from the middle, from overpasses above the crowd or from your parked car in its path. Spectators make up a large share of the injured. - Never pick up thrown objects or gas canisters, and never film confrontations from arm's length. The camera makes you a participant to both sides. - Never use the metro or underpasses to cross a rioting area, being trapped below ground with a panicking crowd is the worst position there is. ### Call emergency services if - Anyone crushed, trampled or struck unconscious, once you can reach them without joining them. - Anyone with breathing trouble after gas exposure that does not ease in fresh air, especially asthmatics. - Fires, looting of buildings with people inside, or anyone trapped. ### Common questions **What do I carry on a day tension is expected?** Comfortable closed shoes you can walk kilometres in, water, a charged phone and powerbank, ID, a little cash, any daily medicines, and knowledge of two ways home that avoid the centre. Leave scarves that mark you as any side at home. **How do I recognise a dangerous crowd density early?** When you touch strangers on several sides at once and can no longer choose your own direction, you are past the safe point, work to the edge now. Waiting to see what happens is how people end up in the crush.