This is not medical advice. It will not certify you. If someone is badly hurt, call 9-1-1 and get a clinician.
FEMA built a short public program for this exact gap: You Are the Help Until Help Arrives. The point is not to turn you into a medic. The point is that the first minutes are often a person who already lives on the street, not a truck. Five actions. That is the whole spine of this page.
Take a real first-aid and CPR class from the Red Cross or your local EMS when you can. This page does not replace that class.
You are the help
A fall in the kitchen. A wreck at the end of the drive. A cut that will not quit. You are already there. The job is to keep the person alive and safer until someone trained takes over.
Look first. If the scene will make a second patient — traffic, a live wire, a dog, a room full of smoke — you do not walk in and become the next problem. You call, you keep other people back, and you wait until the scene is one you can stand in.
If you can reach them, you stay. Talking is part of the work. So is not inventing a field hospital out of a tackle box.
Call 9-1-1
Do this early. Not after you have "tried a few things."
Put the phone on speaker. Say where you are in a way a stranger can find: house number, road, the gate that looks like every other gate. How many people. What you see. Whether they are awake. Whether they are bleeding.
If someone else is there, point at one person and tell them to call. "Somebody call 911" is how nobody calls.
Stay on the line if the dispatcher asks. They will walk you through more than this page will.
Protect them from more harm
Move the person only if leaving them there will hurt them worse — a lane of traffic, a fire, a collapsing shelf. A broken bone is a reason to stay put, not a reason to drag them to the couch.
Shut off what is still hurting them: the mower, the saw, the burner. Keep bystanders from crowding the airway. If it is cold, a coat over the torso matters more than a debate about shock theory. If it is a road, triangles and a person waving traffic down matter more than a perfect bandage.
Do not make them sit up "for air" if they are floppy. Do not give food or a drink to someone who may need a tube later.
Stop the bleeding
Cloth. Pressure. Time.
Put a clean cloth or the cleanest thing you have on the wound and press. Use your whole hand. Do not peek every ten seconds to see if it "worked." Hold. If blood soaks through, add another cloth on top. Do not take the first one off.
A commercial tourniquet is a trained-use tool for a limb that is pumping out. If you have never been shown one in a class, this page will not teach you to improvise one from a belt and a stick. Direct pressure is the household method. Take the class if you want the other tool.
Wash your own hands when you can. See how to wash up without running water if the tap is dead. Their blood on you is a reason to be careful, not a reason to freeze.
Position so they can breathe
If they are awake and breathing, let them find the position that lets air in — often sitting up a little, not flat on a wound in the chest.
If they are unconscious and breathing, and you do not suspect a bad neck or back, roll them onto their side so the tongue and vomit do not own the airway. If you think the neck is hurt, keep the head in line and only move them if they cannot breathe where they are.
Look at the chest. Listen. If they are not breathing, that is the CPR class, not a paragraph on a website. Call 9-1-1 and do what the dispatcher says.
Loosen a collar. Take off a tight scarf. Do not pour water in the face.
Provide comfort
Stay where they can see you. Use their name. Tell them what you already did and that help is coming. A blanket. A hand that is not fidgeting with the wound.
Do not diagnose. Do not promise they are fine. Do not film it.
If you are the only adult, you can still talk while you press. If a child is watching, give them one job that is not medical: hold the flashlight, wait at the door for the truck.
What this is not
This is not a tactic kit. It is not a tourniquet religion. It is not a substitute for a clinician, a 9-1-1 system, or a weekend class with a manikin.
It is not wilderness medicine for a week off-trail. It is not "we don't call because we have a book."
Two things worth owning later, when you are not in the middle of it: Where There Is No Doctor (David Werner, Hesperian) — a plain book about what a household can and cannot do — and a simple Adventure Medical Kits bag you will actually keep in the kitchen or the truck, not a costume. We do not have a buy link for either yet. The skill on this page does not wait on a bag.
If you want a printed list for the house, start with the 72-hour kit and the homestead path. The next skill that keeps people well when the tap is quiet is wash-up, not a bigger kit.
Next: How to wash dishes, hands, and bodies without running water